MyNewPlace Blog

This week, MyNewPlace has made some changes and rolled out some new features to help you find apartments for rent.

The MyNewPlace Apartment Guide will help you rent an apartment, and includes articles that cover topics such as how to organize your apartment search, tips for inspecting apartments and questions for landlords, and ways to cut your moving costs. We have also added articles that we have featured on our blog about renting an apartment with roommates, renters insurance, relocating and pet friendly cities.

Be sure to let us know of any issues you've had with apartments or roommates so that we can address them in future apartment guide articles, which we will add weekly.

We have found that a significant portion rental searches are for houses for rent. In response to this we have added a home rental page that is focus specifically on finding homes for rent. Families looking to have the benefits of a house, such as having a bit more privacy and elbow room, but are not in a position to buy, often find that rental homes suit them much better than apartments.

Renters looking for homes for rent can also select the property type icon at the top of the search menu to display only rental homes.

Finally, we've also added pages tailored for pet friendly apartments. Renting with pets can be difficult, and our pet friendly apartment page (as well as our article on renting with pets) should help pet owners find the apartments they need. To search for dog friendly apartments, cat friendly apartments, or rentals that allow both, simply select the icon at the top of our search menu and make the appropriate change.

We will continue to roll out new upgrades and resources to meet the needs of renters trying to find apartments and houses for rent. As always, give us feedback on how we can make your apartment search easier.

Over the weekend, the MyNewPlace team rolled out the latest upgrades to our search functionality. While a lot of the work was done under the hood, there are some important changes that will make your apartment search even easier.

Photo courtesy of New York Times

Ferrari has nothing on our engineers. Not to mention our much cooler and classier converted kitchen and ever expanding server room.

Performance: 0-60 in less than 3 seconds. We are constantly testing new ways to deliver the fastest and most relevant result set to our users. The most recent changes resulted in a 30% faster experience. Now you can spend less time waiting and more time finding the perfect apartment rental.

Aliases and Search Terms: One of the most interesting pieces of data that we analyze is our failed search terms. Each term is a unique glimpse of what our users want and what they are searching for. Now some of our most popular terms like NYC, SF, Clinton Township and Sherman Oaks will deliver the most up-to-date and relevant apartments.

Maps & More Maps: For those users that love maps and want to search specifically by location, try our interactive map. It makes searching in a neighborhood or city like Houston extremely easy. The default setting will display the normal “list and map," which shows 25 properties, whereas the interactive map can display up to 300 properties and allows you to zoom or adjust your search immediately.

Stayed tuned, there is more on the way. Please keep the feedback coming; be sure to leave cities or zip codes that we have missed in the comments.

Why wait for the check to arrive in the mail when you can go shopping right away with an Amazon.com® gift certificate emailed to you? We just made available the ability for you to elect to receive your cash back in a form other than a check. When you sign a lease with an apartment on our site that offers “cash back," you can choose whether you want to receive a check for $100 or a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate. Your choice! Happy shopping–you need new stuff for that new place you found, don't you?

Just yesterday we release a new feature that allows you to reserve your apartment online. You can read the press release. This feature works with apartments that use a leasing software tool called Vaultware from our friends over at Realty DataTrust. By integrating with Vaultware, you can now reserve your specific apartment unit online. Let me show you how it works: 1. When an apartment is Vaultware-capable, an "Availability" column will appear in the Floorplan detail section of the Detailed Listing page. For example, GardenCrest Apartments in Waltham, MA is enabled with this feature:

2. Click Check and you are taken to a VaultWare page branded with the MyNewPlace look and feel. From here, you can see which units are currently available for each floorplan as well as units available in the future. 3. By clicking Request to Hold, you can reserve the unit.

On many other Apartment sites, the "Check Availability" feature merely sends an email to the apartment community (which you can also do on MyNewPlace by clicking the aptly named Send Email link). Going one step further at MyNewPlace, in partnership with Realty DataTrust, you can actually check the current availability and reserve your apartment unit.

Since we peeled the beta sticker off the site last week, we thought we should celebrate our official launch with you by offering FREE RENT as well as cash and coffee (yes, we are passing on the caffeine addition we have developed to get launched).

Today we announced the “Wake Up and Smell the Free Rent™" Sweepstakes. You can get the details here, or you can see the promotion on our home page. In short, you'll receive a Starbucks Card loaded with $10 when you submit a valid lease claim (in addition to the $100 cash back), and you'll automatically be entered into our summer long sweepstakes to win a month's free rent.

(Psst, our attorney tells me that you can read the official sweepstakes rules here and that no Internet entry or purchse is necessary to enter.)

So, now you can:

1. Get $100 cash back to stock your new refrigerator
2. Use the Starbucks Card loaded with $10 to buy coffee for the friends who helped you load your moving truck
3. Possibly get one month's free rent to help recover from getting those utilities hooked up

It's always the little things that make a big difference. Starting tomorrow, we're changing the name “rebate" to “cash back." It makes it a lot easier for everyone to understand the basic premise of our service which is this:

When you sign a lease and move in to an apartment that you find on MyNewPlace, you get cash back.

Why do you get cash back? Because participating apartment owners and managers are offering to pay cash back to you for locating their apartment on MyNewPlace. It help them to track referrals from our site, and that's how we earn our fee.

Easy, cheesy.

You should see the name change occur later this evening–just as soon as we make sure every needle was found in the haystack. Any guesses on the number of instances of “rebate" that we had to change?

I should also mention that in addition to coming back to our site tomorrow to try to find the needles we missed, you may also want to check back for some other news. I'm sworn to secrecy, but I know you will like it. See you tomorrow.

We peeled the beta sticker off of the site this weekend. Of course, this doesn't mean that we are no longer listening to your feedback just because we're not in "beta." On the contrary, the feedback link remains right up there next to our logo. Keep it coming. As a big part of coming out of beta (and in response to aforementioned feedback from users such as yourselves) we streamlined the registration process. Now, all you need to enter is your email address and a password to create an account. Creating an account means that if you sign a lease with an apartment you viewed, you can return to MyNewPlace to claim your rebate (because we'll know who you are and which apartments of our over 6 million you actually viewed). Happy apartment hunting.

…the list of states offering rebates, that is. Welcome aboard, Illinois.

Rebates are now available from participating properties for you apartment hunters in Maryland. Happy hunting!

As of this morning, rebates are available in Arizona and Missouri. Just a reminder that we are rolling these out state-by-state so that we can make sure we offer the best renter and apartment manger experience. This is what being in “beta" is all about.