A new website called RentJolt launched this year with a new spin on the NYC apartment rental game. Owners can list their apartments and apparently collect up to $1000 when it rents, and renters pay "only" a 5.75% fee to when signing a lease, as opposed to a one month fee, which usually comes to about 12-15%. Though it's nice that yet another site has sprung up claiming to defend against Craigslist scams, this sort of just seems like a discount brokerage for rentals. The site has a nice clean look, but they only have 4 listings in all of Manhattan thus far, and seem to ignore the fact that many NYC apartments can be rented with no fee whatsoever...
However, the RentJolt Blog is filled with some helpful information and bait and switch horror stories for the prospective NYC renter.
