A passkey is your fingerprint or face on this device. There is no password to forget, share, or have stolen, and the apartment list stays between the people who were invited to it.
Most NYC landlords screen at 40× the monthly rent in annual income. Guarantors are usually held to 80×. Work this out before anyone falls in love with an apartment — it is the single most common reason a fast application dies.
Legal in New York: first month plus a security deposit capped at one month. The application fee is capped at $20. Anything beyond that is worth challenging.
In a fast market the apartment goes to whoever can hand over a complete file the same day. Scan every one of these into a single folder on a phone before the first viewing. This is the highest-leverage hour of the whole search.
The answers eliminate more listings than any amenity filter. 1) Do you combine roommate incomes, or must each qualify alone? 2) Do you accept an institutional guarantor? 3) What is the total cash due at signing, itemised? 4) Can we apply the same day we tour?
Paste any Harlem address. This queries New York City's live open data — HPD housing violations, Department of Buildings violations, and the city tax lot record — and grades the building. Nothing here is an estimate; it is the city's own enforcement record.
HPD violation classes: A non-hazardous, B hazardous, C immediately hazardous — no heat, no hot water, vermin, lead. A handful of open violations in an old walk-up is normal New York. Dozens of open Class C in a small building means the landlord does not fix things, and you will be the one living with it. Counts are normalised by unit count, because 40 violations across 8 apartments is a very different building from 40 across 200.
Since 11 June 2025 the FARE Act means a broker hired by the landlord cannot charge you a fee. The city's consumer department has logged over 1,100 complaints about landlords inventing replacement fees instead — "administrative", "technology", "processing" — some as high as $4,200. Paste a listing description or a fee schedule and this flags the language.
Security deposit is capped at one month's rent. Application and background-check fees are capped at $20 total. If a broker was hired by the landlord, their fee is not yours to pay. Complaints go to NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection via 311 or portal.311.nyc.gov. Being willing to say "that fee isn't lawful, please remove it" is worth thousands.