We did it when we moved to Los Angeles, and we’re fairly certain that many of you did it too. We paid The Man of apartment listings, a.k.a. Westside Rentals, 60 bucks so we could scramble to find ourselves that dream apartment in West Hollywood for less than $800. Actually, what we found was less than savory and not quite in our preferred neighborhood. It was “adjacent,” so that suited us well enough. Yes, the Westside Rentals membership is nearly a right of passage for every person relocating to L.A. with the hope of making it big (and even those who don’t have such hopes however rare they might be).
As we recently learned from a reader and from losanjealous, everyone’s favorite rental-listing monopolist is expanding. Its flagship location is moving to a storefront on Wilshire. Business must be good. Even in the free world of Craigslist and the like, Westside Rentals continues to lure in the customers. Maybe it’s those ever-so-enticing previews that are nowhere to be found once you actually join. Maybe it’s their recently inaugurated “networking parties” at which prospective landlords and tenants meet, though this sounds a bit weird to us.
As losanjealous points out, Westside Rentals now has a disclaimer in their terms of use that their listings are proprietary information. Now, unlike Star Jones, we are not lawyers (though one of us is attempting to be one), but we are not sure how they can claim this. Maybe in their rush to expand and rule L.A.’s rental market, they forgot to hire Star Jones a real lawyer. Incidentally, the Better Business Bureau has recently given Westside Rentals a D. Coincidence?
· Westside Rentals Empire Expanding [losanjealous]