I'm sorry, but I think renthop sucks. I know this because I am taking a job in NYC and spent the past week crashing on ferric's couch, conducting an apartment search full-time. And renthop was useless to me.
Searching for "shares" in the East Village yields no results, for example. How hard would it be to harvest craigslist ads? Also, what if I want to do a combined search for shares/studio+s? The neighborhood "Lower East Side" isn't listed. And their "browse" feature is slow and awful.
No, apartment search site needs to function more like a social networking site, so you can preview your roommates' profile, photos, interests/disinterests. And so you can quickly filter by pets, no pets, sex, age range. Everyone asks you to email them a summary anyways. And you need to be able to keep tabs on your applicants/places you are applying to. Not to mention the social proof aspect of having people recommend you.
An NYC apartment site that doesn't suck is next on my to-do list. It's certainly needed. Probably makes more sense as a facebook app.
