Listings Project is a community offering free access to carefully vetted real estate, job, and services offered listings weekly.
Post a Listing    Browse Listings

Real Estate

How and Why We Vet Real Estate Listings

By Emma McAleavy
September 3, 2020

Note from Stephanie:

When Listings Project first began almost 19 years ago it was just me on my teal green iMac G3 with a dial-up connection. I would receive listings via my yahoo email address, cut and paste them into a Microsoft word doc to format them, and then cut and paste them back into my yahoo email address to send to my artist friends. Eventually, I began editing the listings and asking follow-up questions about them, too, to make it easier for members of my community to find space to live in.

That same hands-on, curatorial approach is still a part of how we vet listings today. The foundation of Listings Project is personal listings sent out to personal people. In this article, we’d like to tell you about how we use our vetting process to preserve this intimate and communal approach. 

We hope that learning more about how and why we vet listings will help you connect with and feel at home in our community. 

~ Stephanie




How and Why We Vet Listings


One of the things that make Listings Project different from every other real estate service is how carefully we vet our real estate listings. Vetting is at the core of what we do. It’s how we take care of and protect our community. It’s part of why Bettina Makalintal noted, in her story on Listings Project for Vice, that our listings “seem to all have a real person who cares behind them.” 

Team Image for Vetting Article

Photo by Helen Healey

Our goal with vetting is to make sure that every listing you see on Wednesday morning is thoughtful, inclusive and personal. We also want to make sure that the spaces themselves are what we would consider a welcoming home for a lister. Whether you are looking for space, or are hoping to find a tenant through Listings Project, our vetting process sets a high bar for how we treat each other as we search for and share space.

How and why we vet - 2

Photo by Jazz Atkin

Vetting the Lister

The first thing to know about vetting at Listings Project is that a real person reads every single listing and corresponds individually with listers. When it comes to vetting a listing, the first thing we do is read through it. If you’re a first-time lister, we’ll take a look at your personal website (if you have one) or other publicly available online profiles. We don’t allow third-party entities to profit off the real estate transactions that we facilitate, and we don’t allow brokers, professional management companies or corporate landlords on our site in New York City. So, part of our vetting is making sure that each listing we share is eligible for inclusion on the list.

Once we’re confident that you have an intimate relationship to the space (as a landlord or a tenant looking to sublet), we review your listing to make sure it meets our standards for equity and inclusivity, clarity and adherence to important local tenant protection laws. We check to see that you’ve been clear about what you are looking for and that the listing is in the right category, there aren’t any typos, and the photos are clear.

How and why we vet - 3

Photo by Siobhan OLoughlin

Reviewing Rental Rate

Additionally, our Customer Experience team will make sure that the rental price is in line with market rates for comparable spaces in your area. While we understand that each space is unique, we encourage all Listers to evaluate their listing prices and carefully consider the effect they are having on our community. Overpriced rental listings can contribute to gentrification, pricing out many local residents. As a result, we follow-up with any listings that we deem overpriced to learn more about their pricing structure and the Lister’s expenses. We follow market rate by looking at online real estate platforms and reviewing quarterly market reports from local realties.


We also understand that there may be personal costs associated with a sublet, such as utilities, housingkeeping, and toiletries and furnishings to consider. When it comes to sublets, we ask that your listing does not include passive income. When it comes to pricing sublets, we recommend taking the monthly amount that you pay in rent and utilities, and scaling that price to the length of the sublease. For example, if your monthly rent is $1000 and utilities are $100 per month, you should charge $2,200 for a two-month sublet.


Following our Community Agreements

In checking that your listing adheres to our Community Agreements, we also make sure it doesn’t include any discriminatory language. For example, we have a policy not to use the word “safe” in our listings. This is because the word “safe” has a long history of being used in a coded and discriminatory way in the real estate industry. Instead of using the word “safe,” we’ll ask you to use a few sentences to describe what you like about their neighborhood or street, this helps contextualize what feels safe to you. We also check to see that the listing complies with the Tenant Protection Act, specifically when it comes to the deposit. Per the Tenant Protection Act, in New York State, landlords can only request one month's rent as a deposit, as opposed to a deposit in addition to first and last month's rent.

how and why we vet listings - 3

Photo by Rose Zhang


Lastly, if we have any general questions or concerns during the vetting process, we’ll reach out to you to ask you about it. After we hear from you and learn more about your listing, we may ask you to modify your listing, depending on the situation, or confirm that your listing is approved.



Emma McAleavy was Listings Project's Content Editor. During her tenure at Listings Project she brought the stories of our community to life on our blog and in our monthly newsletter. Emma’s writing has also appeared in The New York Times, Outside Magazine, and Architectural Digest.

Related Articles

Real Estate Healthy Moving
Nicole Daniels | June 2, 2023
Real Estate Everything You Need to Know About Security Deposits
Nicole Daniels | March 29, 2023
Real Estate Pet-Friendly: A Guide for Landlords and Tenants
Nicole Daniels | February 23, 2023
Browse Listings Post a Listing Join / Sign In