It's not that apartments.com isn't reliable, I would assume it reliably reports the data it gets. But most apartments don't get rented through apartments.com,

It's not that apartments.com isn't reliable, I would assume it reliably reports the data it gets. But most apartments don't get rented through apartments.com, and the ones that don't are skewed towards the lower end of the market. The 4-flat where the owner is renting out the other 3 places and living in one of them doesn't show up on apartments.com. I don't know where you find good comprehensive data, you tell me. But if you are looking at bad data because you can't find good data, you are the drunk looking for his keys underneath the street light not because he lost his keys there but because the light is good.