As some of you may have noticed, we recently rolled out a completely redesigned rental profile page, along with a few other updates to the site.

In addition to being easier to scan and much cleaner (we think), there are a few changes to the layout that landlords should be aware of.

The biggest change is the layout of the rental details (rent amount, deposit, and included amenities). Before, if a rental had not yet been reviewed and rated by at least one student, no information about that rental would be displayed either on the rental profile page or in the rental search results, whether the landlord had registered and entered info for that rental or not.

Old Rental Profile

New Rental Profile

Now, if the rental has rent and amenities info from the landlord, that info will always show up in the search results and in the rental profile.

We’ve also designed a much more compact way of visualizing the rental details, both according to the landlord, and from the student reviews, which takes about 1/5 the space on the rental profile as the table previously used. We’ll save the benefit of this for the next blog post though.

Old Profile - No Reviews

New Profile - No Reviews

The second main update to the profile layout is moving the Nearby Availabilities and Nearby Rentals to tabs that appear by default behind the Availabilities for that rental. If the rental has any active Availabilities or Sublets needed, they will appear in the foreground, with Nearby Availabilities and Rentals in the background tabs. If there are no active Availabilities or Sublets, the default foreground tab will be Nearby Availabilities.

Nearby Info in Background Tabs

This also has the added benefit of not separating the reviews for the the rental from the report card and the rest of the rental information.

And finally, we have added a thumbnail for each rental to the search results page, so that it’s immediately visible and easier to scan through search results, rather than before when the thumbnail was only visible when the user clicked “show on map”.

Old Rental Search Results

New Rental Search Results

So, what do you think of the new redesign? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Alright, we are not talking about identity theft per say because we don’t need your social security number or your mama’s maiden name for you to rate your rental.  But, we have taken our users right to anonymity one step further.  As a student you can be sure you can keep a low profile but still accomplish what RateMyStudentRental.com has to offer.

When you create your account you can choose whatever username you desire.  This username will appear on your rental reviews and will be how other users view your activity on the site.

TIP: If you want to keep a low profile pick a username that does not incorporate your first or last name, your school email address, or other terms descriptive of your real identity.

Situation 1:

When you contact a landlord your real name will appear as the contact. We’ve chosen to do this because chances are when you contact a landlord, whether to inquire about an available room or to submit a maintenance request, eventually you are going to disclose your  real name - and when that time comes, we don’t want your reviews (linked to your username) to be revealed to the landlord.

Situation 2:

When Landlords make the first contact to you they will only know/see your username, allowing you to reveal your identity at your discretion (or as we recommend, not at all).  Even when you reply to a thread that was started by a landlord your real name will NOT be displayed unless you type it in the body of the message.

We’re taking every measure we can to keep the identity of your review completely separate from the business you can conduct through RateMyStudentRental.com, while managing both identities under one account.

So, you may still be asking why it is important to keep your username and real identity separate?  It’s simple, at least we think so!  We don’t want students to feel any pressure to hold back the truth about a shoddy rental for fear of being bullied by a landlord or singled out.

If you have comments or suggestions on how we can do an even better job with this issue, please contact us and we’ll be happy to hear your thoughts.