People at RentCity

Our website launched in March 2020 right when the COVID pandemic was accelerating and things were the worst here in NYC. We knew that while spending all their time at home, renters were figuring out what they liked and disliked about their apartments. Tenants started using our site to write more detailed reviews than ever before. Surprisingly, we’ve noticed more positive reviews during the COVID pandemic, with tenants and landlords working together to ease the burden and anxiety we’re all feeling at home. What we’re most proud of though is our free-rent sweepstakes. We launched this campaign before the pandemic because it felt like a very relevant way to reward one lucky rental reviewer. Things changed quickly. We found that during the pandemic, there was a growing need for information and good news. We pivoted our blog to posting informative content about how to make it through quarantine; we researched and described the conditions of the eviction bans, tenant harassment, and other critical issues. These posts were shared widely and brought new reviewers to the site, and we heard so many painful stories of struggle. It felt really good to randomly draw our winner last week, and we’ll be writing about who won very soon. We were thrilled to discover this individual is as kind and deserving as we could have hoped and represents the very best of what makes New York City special. It’s nice to have something work out, in spite of everything.