Naked Apartments launches new tool for NYC renters

Jay Charat and Jay Signorello
Jay Charat and Jay Signorello

Showings on Demand – a new tool that aims to help nestseekers land the right apartment faster by cutting the back-and-forth with rental brokers – launched this morning on Naked Apartments’ website, according to a release.

The tool uses a proprietary platform on which renters set a time to see a listed apartment and then Naked Apartments finds an agent to show the property, in the same way that the startup Uber finds taxis for users from among a pool of nearby drivers.

To use Showings on Demand, a renter makes a request to see an apartment at a specified time. Naked Apartments then alerts all agents with access to that apartment, providing the renter’s key details. The first agent to accept the request gets the showing and will be connected with the renter, at which point the would-be tenant receives confirmation along with the agent’s full information.

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Settings on Demand is free to the renter, and agents pay $20 for a confirmed showing.

For agents, the tool aims to fill downtime with showings, establishing a connection between them and a pool of new potential clients.

The technology has been in the works for over two years, but Naked Apartments said the company decided to hold off on the launch until reaching a suitable scale. –Julie Strickland