Listings are often stale
When you start your hunt, you'll often run into situations where an apartment listed online is no longer available. Sites like Naked Apartments use sophisticated mechanisms to remove listings when the landlord or broker fails to, but no site is perfect.
Why? There's no central database of listings, landlords have difficulty communicating with sites and brokers, and apartments can be on and off the market in hours. Again, welcome to New York.
Gone by the time you show up
Often a landlord won't tell a broker the apartment is gone until the broker calls to arrange a showing. Even worse, this can happen when a broker shows up and asks for the keys. Because a lot of individual landlords are difficult to reach, even the best brokers can't always prevent this from happening. But if it happens repeatedly to your broker, find a new broker!
Bait and switch
Sometimes agents advertise apartments that simply do not exist. When you call to inquire about the listing, they'll make up a story about what happened to the make-believe apartment and offer to show you real apartments instead. It's called bait and switch; it's inexcusable, and we kick brokers off our site for trying this. If you see it on our site, please let us know.
Why can't I see the address?
If a broker were to disclose the address of a listing, the renter might bypass the broker to avoid paying the fee. For a hard-working agent, this would be the equivalent of working for free. So you should expect to see a general location, such as Upper West Side (UWS), in the listing. When you meet the broker for a showing, he or she will first meet you at a nearby spot (i.e. Starbucks).