Just over a year ago we spotlighted ApartmentList, a website that claims the following mission:
As renters and landlords ourselves, we understand the widespread frustration with the current rental landscape. Our mission is to turn the renter/landlord relationship into one of trust and transparency. Finding your next home should be a delightful process, and we’re building the tools to ensure that happens.
When we first looked at the site we judged it to be a garbage dump, full of toxic waste listings that routed renters to unknowable destinations. A fresh look at the site confirms our previous take.
We’ve been hearing that ApartmentList has been reaching out aggressively to Chicago landlords, and we’re at a loss to understand why landlords would support a site that’s massively polluted by rental services that advertise the landlords’ properties, often inaccurately, in competition with them. We also fail to understand why renters respond to ads on sites like ApartmentList without having any clue as to who they’re contacting.