RentReboot Research Methodology

RentReboot publishes two kinds of material: practical renter guidance based mainly on primary public sources, and original market research based on listings observed by RentReboot. Each page should say which kind of evidence it uses.

Renter guidance

We prefer the agency that administers a rule: New York State Homes and Community Renewal for rent regulation, NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection for the FARE Act, and NYC or New York State tenant-protection agencies for application fees, deposits, and discrimination protections. Secondary sources are used for context, not to replace controlling guidance.

Listing-market research

Reports state their collection dates and covered platforms. Listings are matched to a canonical apartment primarily by normalized building address and unit. Sources without reliable unit identifiers produce more conservative overlap estimates. Posting-time comparisons use the earliest observed appearance per apartment and disclose whether a source provides a timestamp, a date only, or an observation time from RentReboot's tracker.

What the data cannot prove

• A building-level rent-regulation match does not prove that a specific apartment is rent-stabilized.
• A listing's asking rent does not prove the final contracted rent.
• Observed listings are not a census of every privately marketed or off-market apartment.
• Platform coverage and speed can change after a report's stated observation period.

Corrections and reproducibility

Material methodology or data errors receive an inline correction on the affected page. When commercial or privacy constraints prevent publication of row-level data, the report still describes the sample, transformations, matching rules, and known gaps needed to evaluate the result.

Last reviewed July 22, 2026