NYT property metasearch service StreetEasy has just rolled out a rental search feature, joining NateFind in the race to aggregate the city's rental pads (Trulia focuses on sales). That's among the upgrades to the site that a StreetEasy correspondent describes thusly to us: "We've changed the site layout so we can include more comparative information for both sales and rentals and to generally make it easier to move around. We've added neighborhood pages, so we can provide current stats, show the new developments in the area and give a glimpse of what's been listed and closed recently. And finally we've added an enhanced search function which allows for text search across our databases. You can search on an address, street name, building name, neighborhood, school number/name as well as search the descriptions of all sales and rental listings." Nifty.
· NYC Rentals [StreetEasy Rentals]
BONUS: Manhattan User's Guide, peeved at the NYT's $1,000 rentals story yesterday, throws down a challenge: "We’d be interested in hearing from any reader who has rented, or who knows someone who has rented, a better-than-decent one-bedroom apartment for $1,000 on any street corner in Manhattan in, say, a decade... On the website Natefind, we found a total of three 1BR apartments currently listed for $1,200 or less in Manhattan. The Times' own listings show 153, but closer examination reveals a substantial number are sublets, some are stabilized, and virtually all of them are in the upper reaches of the island. Nothing wrong with that, but for those who work and play in midtown or downtown, Brooklyn and Queens may be equally or more attractive alternatives." Your detective work in the comments, svp.