Making New York home for good? Then be a New Yorker. Street Easy, Zillow’s real estate brand built for NYC, just pulled a wildcard for you. The brand is partnering with some of the city’s most famous institutions – Roberta’s, Russ & Daughters, the Guggenheim, Playwrights Horizons — to let New Yorkers book reservations in 2046.

“In New York City, few things are as sacred or treasured as a hard-to-get reservation. They’ve become both a kind of social currency and a badge of honor worthy of envy and admiration alike. In this activation, we’ve imbued these reservations at iconic New York institutions with something more meaningful than simple exclusivity — a declaration of commitment to the city we love, and life we can’t get enough of,” stated Evan Carpenter, group strategy director, Mother New York.

The Mother New York campaign, Reserve Your Future, is StreetEasy’s 20th anniversary celebration and an expansion of the Be a Forever New Yorker campaign – a love letter to the city and the people who’ve made it their forever home – both deliberate rejections of category marketing. While the core campaign celebrates famed New Yorkers we all aspire to emulate, inspiration alone isn’t enough. StreetEasy needed to make people truly envision themselves here, long term. 

New Yorkers who are on the fence about buying don’t need to see more listings. They need to see themselves there in 20 years. StreetEasy’s Reserve Your Future does that by anchoring them – and the brand – in restaurants, theatres, bookstores, and bars that make leaving New York feel unthinkable. Every reservation is a prompt for people to imagine their future self still living there, and StreetEasy is the brand that helped them get there.

“When you’re choosing where to call home, you’re also choosing where to build a life, so we recognise that these iconic neighbourhood businesses play as much of a role in New Yorkers’ real estate decisions as StreetEasy does. It’s undeniable that this city has a way of making you choose it over and over again. Reserve Your Future is about celebrating the people who choose New York forever, and the places that make staying impossible to resist,” added Bridget Sullivan, director of integrated marketing, StreetEasy.

The activation starts with a simple website, reserveyourfuture.nyc, designed in the spirit of classic New York restaurant and hotel reservation aesthetics, incorporating elements like the design and font from the “Be a Forever New Yorker” campaign. Here, New Yorkers can choose from a wide variety of future reservations, broken down by date and time.

Each reservation comes with a limited number of time slots and a few extra terms and conditions not found on other reservation platforms. Before booking, StreetEasy asks visitors to complete two non-negotiables:

1. Commit to being a Forever New Yorker now, and forever
2. A New York-specific CAPTCHA that doesn’t just prove you’re a human, but a tried and true New Yorker