It’s the tried and true request of all renters to their brokers: “send me pictures”. The rental market moves quickly, especially as compared to the sales market. Particularly in the busy summer months, it’s not uncommon for an apartment to go on the market one week and be rented the next. This is where the distinction between exclusive and open listings kicks in. Open listings make up 80%+ of rental inventory; these are apartments whose landlords are not exclusively represented by any one broker. Anyone has direct access to them.
This means it makes no sense for a broker to go in, gain access (assuming you can without a client), take pictures, write the description and then advertise the apartment, only to have it rented by the competition before the ad is even posted. It takes time and time is money. Ergo, the vast majority of apartments with pictures are exclusives, meaning one broker represents the owner and is working on his/her behalf to rent the apartment out, guaranteeing him/herself some payment. Typically this comes via a co-broke, where the fee is paid by the tenant and split between the two brokers.
If you are looking on Streeteasy, therefore, and relying on pictures to get a true sense of what’s out there, or are asking your broker to show you only apartments you’ve seen in pictures, you are limiting yourself to a small slice of the market and increasing the likelihood of your paying a fee. A better move is to find a broker whom you trust who will give you access to inventory you don’t know or have access to on your own. That is, after all, why you’d use a broker in the first place: access, knowledge and efficiency.
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they came whithout pictures because they don’t offer exactly what the ad say