ApartmentRatings.com Strikes again

"Now renters can see what other residents are paying at thousands of apartment communities. This is an important tool that helps renters find and choose the best apartments," said Jeremy Bencken, president and general manager of ApartmentRatings.com. "Our goal is to build services that focus on providing renters unique and hard-to-access information about apartments. Ultimately we believe our apartment ratings and apartment reviews, and now pricing survey information, drive more informed, more serious customers to our advertisers." [Read the full story here]

Let me get this straight Jeremy , the renter is going to give you the information that you will publish on your site? And, you are going to validate that in some way, I trust? I mean what is to stop the user from reporting a less than true rate not unlike some of the simply untrue reviews on the site.

Maybe you should back up and think about driving a more informed, more serious consumer to good quality communities, not to the advertisers. This important tool helps renters choose the best value, not necessarily the best apartment. It’s seem a bit disingenuous to suggest they would get "the best," don’t you think? And, I’m not convinced that it is hard to get this information. I did an anonymous shop of my market just about a week ago and it took all of 8 phone calls and about 25 minutes of my time.

I say all that and I am a fan of the site and consumer reviews believing that the astute apartment searcher would negate the many exaggerated comments that are posted.