New York Habitat Blog

New York Habitat is now providing a new version of maps for our website.

With apartment rentals in New York, Paris, London and the South of France it was essential to provide our customers the best tools possible.

The new maps now have the following features, which we think you will enjoy:

Each map has three settings to view by clicking on the choices at the top right corner:

1. Map: Which shows a standard street map
2. Satellite:  Which shows a satellite view of the streets
3. Hybrid: A combined view of both the satellite and street maps

The maps can be zoomed in and out using the + and – buttons

By putting the mouse over the map and clicking on it you can move the position of the map to see surrounding areas

In Paris and London, the subway stations are also included in the maps.

With the increased level of interactivity, these maps allow you to see more about the area the apartment is located in and a greater level of detail of streets that are nearby.

To provide security for the apartment owners we do not release the exact address of the apartment. Instead, we show a blue circle within which the apartment is located.

As always when looking for furnished accommodations, New York Habitat provided its owners and clients with the latest technological advancements all to make the job of fining a great furnished apartment that much easier.

When planning your trip and looking through our lists of apartments, you have in mind the price range in which you are looking, but the rental price is displayed in the destination currency and you are not always sure how much that means and if it actually really fits your budget.

Many of you wrote to say how useful you find our descriptions and photos, yet some of you pointed out what a great help it would be to be able to read the accommodation prices in your own currency.

Apartment price in the currency of your choice

Until quite recently you could only do that by selecting the currency from the search pages, in our Advanced Options, under Include currency (sample here)

New York Habitat recently added the currency converter in each detailed apartment description as well, so that even if you did not select your currency in the search page, you can easily display the price of the apartment you are looking at in the currency of your choice.(sample here)

Apartment price in the currency of your choice

Prices displayed for each apartment are in the currency of the country where the apartment is: USD for New York, Sterling Pound for London and Euro for Paris and the South of France. The currency converter can display the shown price in US $, Aus $, Sterling £, Canadian $, Euro, FRF, ¥en, Deutsch Mark and Swiss FR.

N.B. The currency converter is based on an average of international rates from multiple known financial sites and is compiled every day; therefore it fluctuates on a continuous basis. New York Habitat is only giving this average as an indication and is not liable for any discrepancy with the official rate of any given date.

New York Habitat global apartment quick search

When communicating with our team during your apartment search, you may receive a message like this: “Apartment # NY-11734 has just become available for your dates, do you like it?”

To find out more about this apartment, all you need to do is go to our homepage www.nyhabitat.com, find the “Quick Search” box in the middle of the left hand side column, enter the reference number (digits only) and select the destination (in our example, New York) immediately below the box where you entered the apartment reference number. Then, click on “GO”.

This will lead you directly to the apartment full description and photos.

It’s fast and easy!

New York Habitat apartment quick search

You will also find another Quick Search box on each destination page (after you have clicked on a specific destination from our home page, for example http://www.nyhabitat.com/paris-apartment.html for an apartment in Paris). The box is just below the list of the types of rentals (Vacation Rentals, Furnished Rentals, Roommate Shares, Bed and Breakfast). In the Quick Search box, from this page, you only need to enter the digits of the apartment reference number.

Try it!

Find similar rentals in this area

When you find an apartment rental that you may like on our website, you can click on the top right link to “Find similar rentals in this area”.

This tool will look for an accommodation having the same characteristics as the one on display. For example, if you find a Studio in Chelsea (New York), clicking on the link will lead you to a list of all studio apartments located in the Chelsea area.

Using “Find similar rentals” is a great way to save time–you’re just one click away from finding accomodations in your preferred area. And it’s a terrific tool to compare price, availabilities and amenities before making a choice!

Looking for an apartment usually starts very precisely with “looking for”… New York Habitat apartment search pages enable you to enter a number of criteria to match your requirements. What was missing so far, was a quick and easy way to check which new apartments are listed on our website that match your criteria without having to go through all our postings again or having to re-enter your criteria on each visit.

We have just finalized the integration of such a solution thanks to the latest developments in technology. It is called RSS Feed (RSS for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) and is the ideal tool to make your search a Really Simple Search!!

What is it exactly?

RSS Feed is text content in a format that you can view via a special reader after you have subscribed (for free!) to the content of your choice from a website. What happens next is that you do not need anymore to visit the website to be able to view their updates.

It is already widely used in news and news-like sites. Once you have subscribed to their RSS content, you can open your RSS player and keep track of the website updates. Your RSS reader automatically downloads all new feeds for you.

Where can you find an RSS reader?

A number of free and commercial readers (aggregators) are available for download. Many are separate, “stand-alone” programs; other services will let you add RSS feeds to a Web page.
You may also use integrated web based readers from Yahoo or Google. For example, Google users can add RSS feeds directly to their “My Google” page by clicking on the “Add to Google” button.

How does the customized New York Habitat search feed work?

This is the true power of this technology applied to apartment search.

From any main New York Habitat apartment search page (let’s say for example New York accommodation rentals), you first need to fill out your search criteria (for example, for New York, select: Studio, Chelsea area, $150 per night with a starting date of 12-20-06). Then click on “view apartments”.

RSS logo

Our website will display a result page, i.e. a list where you can find available apartments that match your search criteria. On the same page (at the bottom), you can find an RSS button (orange icon). By clicking on it, you can “subscribe” to this feed (customized search).

Through your RSS reader, you will then automatically receive the newly updated apartments that match the search criteria you initially selected (studios in Chelsea, for the selected price and dates). You will not need to go to www.nyhabitat.com anymore to view our last updates, but your reader will still give you the option to link you directly to the apartment you select from your reader’s list.

Frequently, we receive feedback asking for detailed maps of apartment locations. Well there is indeed a link on each apartment page description in two places.

One is labeled “detailed street map” at the top right of the apartment page (in the location section).
Another is “map this apartment” at the bottom of the page with a blue icon: “MAP”

These take you to a separate page with a complete map of the area and a blue circle in the general area where the property is located.

This feature is especially helpful for Greenwich Village apartments in New York, as the streets often run diagonally.

Hope this information will help you.

You asked for apartment floor plans—Et Voilá! 

Not good at puzzles? Sometimes, putting apartment pictures together in your “mind’s eye” is not easy. (Neuroscientists tell us that not everyone is “wired” the same for spatial orientation!).

Many of our rental accommodation descriptions will now include a simplified version of the floorplan. We hope to present a better overview of room size, location, and orientation of our rental apartments. This is particularly useful on duplex and large apartments (see a 4 Bedroom Triplex in Paris).

Hope you enjoy it.

Vacation Rental accommodation in Paris Auteuil - Tour Eiffel: 4 Bedrooms - Duplex

P.S. Due to the labor required to draw these layouts, not all of the apartment descriptions have them yet, but we are working hard to provide as many as possible.