FlyRig.com – 2.0 Apartment Hunting.
FlyRig.com is a reasonably new (launched very late last year) NYC apartment rental listing service. The site has some of the best google maps API implementation i’ve ever seen.
After selecting the area you want to live in (Manhattan for example) you’re taken to a page clearly listing information on the different properties in that area. When you mouse over the different apartments google maps smoothly zooms to the apartments location on the map. It’s a wonderfully clear and concise way of looking for a place to live.
We’re trying to improve the rental process here in New York. The tight market
results in misinformation and opportunities for unscrupulous agents – things
that are frustrating to both renters and agents who work hard to build trust
with their clients. In addition, there lacks a modern solution for finding
apartments in the city – the most popular listing services either lack mapping
capabilities or supporting information commonly needed when deciding on a place
to live.
FlyRig was self funded by Adrian Liang. He works on the site full time along with one other part-time employee and two occasionally used contractors. Since launching in December 2007 they’ve signed up over 250 brokers from some of the largest agencies in the city.
It’s a really nice little service. The system could presumably be expanded into other cities without too much effort.
© | We're Running WordPress, by the way. 
Sarah:
April 19th, 2008
5:20 pm
This is a really cool idea! I could see this being a really helpful site. I hope they do expand it to other cities.
tom:
April 20th, 2008
12:49 pm
cool site!
but some more info about the developoing proces would be cool
Seb:
April 20th, 2008
4:37 pm
You seem to have drifted from the concept that drives this site. You haven’t gone into why this is a bootstrapping startup, nor given us any figures. This post also lacks detail I feel. Perhaps fill it out and repost?
Jon:
April 20th, 2008
4:56 pm
I was working with the information i had.
I agree, more information about the sites development process + costs would have been interesting but some people aren’t comfortable handing that information over.
Adrian:
April 21st, 2008
8:52 am
Hi Everyone,
First off, I’d like to thank Jon for mentioning us on this blog. I’ll write a little about our history below, but I’m more than happy to answer any questions people may have!
I started toying around with the idea of FlyRig late last summer, after going through a horrific process of apartment searching here in New York. At first, it was just an experiment in seeing what I could do – I started building a website that collected Craigslist listings and mapped them with Google Maps (a la housingmaps.com). It ended up being much easier than I thought, and I intended to continue building on Craigslist until I read their policies regarding 3rd-party use of their data (very limited to not allowed at all). I decided to go ahead and rebuild a new site, sign up brokers, and see if I could make it successful (still waiting on that part!). The first issue was building the site. Fortunately for me, I had a good development background and knew a few people that could help pitch in. The development process could have been the most money and time consuming piece of my business, but I was very lucky in regard to the resources I had. I did about 90% of the development myself using a LAMP architecture (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) on a $10 a month web hosting provider. After 3 months, I was ready to launch and leased some machines in a dedicated hosting provider located in Texas. The second issue was getting brokers to use us and build up our listings database. I approached a real estate broker who helped me find my apartment and he agreed to help out. Due to the extremely competitive real-estate environment here in New York (there are over 5,000 brokers in the city), it was pretty easy to get brokers to try us. The third issue was getting renters to visit our site, and was somewhat tied to our second issue. Brokers wouldn’t continue posting unless they got leads, and people wouldn’t visit unless we had listings. It was a chicken-or-the-egg problem that plagued us for our first few months of operation. The easy solution to get visitors was an advertising buy, but any type of effective advertising was expensive, and I didn’t want to spend more than $1,000 a month. So I scoured the web for blogs, directories, and message boards and wrote in to all of them. The majority of them didn’t answer, but a few did, and we slowly built up our traffic through their posts and word-of-mouth.
We’re still far from being well-known and have a long ways to go to supplant Craigslist as the destination for rentals here in New York, but we’re slowly picking up steam. As long as we keep improving our site and increasing our listings database, we should continue on an upward trend. Because I funded this myself, I’ve had to keep costs as low as possible. Our monthly costs are under $2,000, half of which are currently used for Google Adwords. I’m able to keep things low because nobody is getting paid. I’ve been lucky enough to find people who are willing to sacrifice the immediate financial rewards for the prospect of being a part of a successful business.
renah Bell:
July 6th, 2008
1:31 am
Hi, I just read a reference to you in an article in the NYTimes on the weekend real estate page. I wish you tons of success. It is a slow build, but well worth the challenge. Are you also advertising apartments in Queens? I have 2 in the Rockaways( a one bedroom and a 3 bedroom) that are for rent and the one in Brooklyn may also be available( a studio on Herkimer Street). Do I have to pay to put them online? I am a realtor.