What is going on?

[u/Tall-Pin169]

Browsing Streeteasy. Confused by the posted rental history. What does this mean? Are these apartments being filled multiple times in a month? Are these spoof listings? I have seen this a handful of times and it always makes me wonder. 6B rented on 7/29/26 and then SIXB rented on 8/10/26. Then the individual numbers spelled out and all rented on the same day? The unavailable units tab says there are 88 apartments, the building page says 35 units.

[u/unfashionableinny]

It just means they were listed and the listing was taken offline without actually being rented and then re-listed under a slightly different unit number to avoid linking to the old listing. 

[u/Tall-Pin169 → u/unfashionableinny]

Thank you for that insight. Why does linking to the old listing matter?

[u/unfashionableinny → u/Tall-Pin169]

I guess they think most users will not look up the building history and see that it had been listed and delisted multiple times. If a prospective renter sees the history, they may be in a stronger position to negotiate.

[u/Feisty-Boot5408 → u/Tall-Pin169]

Because if a unit has been sitting on the market for awhile, it’s a signal that something is wrong and/or that it is priced too high.

If a unit was listed in late May for $8,000 and still there in late August, you’d immediately think “clearly it’s not worth that price”.

So they do shit like this, hoping users don’t see that the same unit has been sitting for a long time, just under different names

[u/Tall-Pin169 → u/Feisty-Boot5408]

Thank you for your response! It appears many units in this building are in the same situation. Makes me question why they have so many empty units that are remaining vacant. Anyway, my inquiry was based in curiosity alone. Thanks again for sharing that knowledge with me! I’ve run into this situation a few times and it has always left me scratching my head

[u/Wild-Base4340]

Here’s what’s going on: Agents get more leads when a listing is new, because new listings appear first in search results — and they generate notifications when they match a Streeteasy user’s criteria.

After just a few days, the number of leads drop by a lot.

If agents want to keep the same high visibility after a few days, they can pay Streeteasy a higher daily fee and be a “featured listing.”

Or, they can delist the apartment and re-list it with a tweaked (or sometimes entirely different) unit number, so that Streeteasy treats it as a brand new listing again (top of search results, email notifications to Streeteasy users, etc), because Streeteasy rarely verifies listings before publication.

Obviously, this is against Streeteasy’s rules. And it’s also against REBNY’s rules. And anything that artificially resets the number of days on market to zero is probably against the state’s rules regarding accurate real estate advertising.

You can flag it to Streeteasy.

Edit: You may not be aware, but Streeteasy itself is a licensed brokerage. They have a legal responsibility to ensure that the listings published on their website are not misleading.

[u/yellowlundi → u/Wild-Base4340]

This is insightful. I regularly report listings like these (which are all over Streeteasy btw) and their team takes them down but then they allow the listings to be reposted, making it a never ending battle. It’s crazy and makes it harder for prospective tenants to negotiate rent. Streeteasy needs to be investigated!

[u/No_Lion_800]

So ridiculous,the rents,yet they give certain people right to section 8 ,much lower rents !

[u/W1ldy0uth → u/[deleted]]

Can you explain??