[HN Gopher] We replaced rental brokers with software and filled ... ___________________________________________________________________ We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments Author : rdgthree Score : 575 points Date : 2021-07-08 15:07 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (caretaker.com) (TXT) w3m dump (caretaker.com) | blakesterz wrote: | This was really well written, such a good read. | | It somehow made the phrase "Everything that can be automated is | automated." less... I don't know... scary I guess. I can't put my | finger on it, but giving all this up to some algorithms seems | wrong/worrisome for some reason, but seeing exactly how it was | done made it less so. | jandrese wrote: | Using _the algorithm_ to eliminate leeching middlemen was one | of the promises of the future. | | Real estate in general is full of middlemen looking for a cut | and providing little to no value. The whole industry is overdue | for a shakeup. | cortesoft wrote: | Sadly, our experience shows that 'the algorithm' becomes very | centralized (because of the network effect), and suddenly | this new middleman starts extracting fees comparable to the | previous middlemen. | stinkytaco wrote: | Please see: ticket sales: Ticketmaster, Stubhub, etc. | | In theory, these make sense and reduce anti-consumer | inefficiency like scalping that individual venues are not | equipped to deal with. In practice, they extract fees. It's | not that they are bad, per se, just that if the opportunity | exists, someone with a spreadsheet will spot it, likely | with the best intentions but no eye to the overall impact. | | EDIT: To be clear, I think these services are a net good. | Stubhub allows me to get sports tickets at a reduced price | if someone can't go to the game. Ticketmaster stops people | from spamming the system to gobble up tickets, it's just | that these industries are now going to want a fee for that | and we end up back where we started. I'm sure at one time | brokers were helpful as well (a landlord free way to | compare properties). | criddell wrote: | Not sure about Stubhub, but Ticketmaster exists to be the | bad guy. Lots of Ticketmaster fees are shared with the | promoter and venue operator. | sneak wrote: | Now it's just used to eliminate the poor and unemployed. | wombatmobile wrote: | > This was really well written, such a good read. | | The author's extreme user empathy, attention to detail, and | willingness to do whatever it takes to reach a standard makes | this a comforting read. You know it's going to end without | disappointment, because he does whatever it takes to get good | results for all stakeholders. | dailybagel wrote: | The article mentions how important it is to keep availability | status accurate: Before I get into the solution, | I should explain why these renters have such persistent | trust issues. [...] Because | messaging/applications/leasing were all on-platform for | us, we could know when a lister was unresponsive or a | lease was signed. That insight naturally allowed us to | reliably prevent stale listings. Critically, however, new | renters to our website didn't know that. And they wouldn't | believe us when we said it. We were in a bit of a pickle. | | When sampling listings in Manhattan, the second one I came across | was in fact not actually available [0]. "Hi, this | unit has been rented, what exactly are you searching | for?" | | [0]: https://apartment.app/listings/2-bedroom-west-53rd-street- | ne... | yawaworht1978 wrote: | Economically a great result, that is indisputable. A small "but" | however, did you also improve the customer experience? I am | asking as someone who has lived long term in many Airbnb and | similar platforms, and almost every single on of them has | problems, uses every trick not covered by terms and conditions | and has an evasive and unresponsive customer service. Too many to | list but I've experienced: No car parking available(were full) | when advertised as "with free parking" Free wifi- but not | installed Aircon- no aircon in sight(been renovated) Cameras in | the flat- but "don't worry they are disabled and part of the | alarm system" More such things and extremely annoying to resolve. | | Not saying your product has these issues, just asking if this is | considered and handled or if it's all purely profit oriented. | DoctorNick wrote: | great, now replace landlords. | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | With what? | handojin wrote: | communism | frashelaw wrote: | 10000000 million | Robotbeat wrote: | The Singapore system purportedly works pretty well. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | Does Singapore do anything in particular with regard to | landlords? | khuey wrote: | In Singapore the state builds housing and sells it to | citizens cheaply. | Robotbeat wrote: | Singapore has "social housing" except the government | builds the housing and sells it to people for cheap: | https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/a-singapore-plan-for- | publi... | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | My understanding is that the median condo in Singapore | costs $1M USD. Is this not true, and if it is, then how | is $1M USD for a condo considered cheap? | | You can get condos next to The Four Seasons in Beverly | Hills for that price... | Robotbeat wrote: | Is your figure for private condos or government built? | | Keep in mind Singapore has a higher PPP per capita than | the US. | greenshackle2 wrote: | That's for private condos. 80% of people in Singapore | live in government built public housing. The cost of the | average public apartment is more like $300k which is not | that bad for a city like Singapore. | | As far as I can tell most comparisons for "the price of | housing between Singapore and X" only look at private | condos, probably because X doesn't have anything like | Singapore's public flats to compare with for almost all | values of X. | | (When you "buy" a public apartment from the government, | you get a 99 year lease, which you can resell. There are | restrictions on buying public apartments, if I remember | right you have to be a citizen or PR, and you have to be | married or 35+. They cannot be bought by corporations.) | [deleted] | greenshackle2 wrote: | It bars corporate landlords from 80% of the housing | stock, which is public. However they can buy and rent out | the other 20% much like anywhere else, I guess. | frashelaw wrote: | "The rent of the land, therefore, considered as the price paid | for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not | at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon | the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take; | but to what the farmer can afford to give. " | | -- ch 11, wealth of nations "As soon as the | land of any country has all become private property, the | landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never | sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce." | | -- Adam Smith "[the landlord leaves the worker] | with the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself | without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him | any more." | | -- ch 11, wealth of nations. "The landlord | demands a rent even for unimproved land, and the supposed | interest or profit upon the expense of improvement is generally | an addition to this original rent. Those improvements, besides, | are not always made by the stock of the landlord, but sometimes | by that of the tenant. When the lease comes to be renewed, | however, the landlord commonly demands the same augmentation of | rent as if they had been all made by his own. " | | -- ch 11, wealth of nations. "RENT, considered | as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the highest | which the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances. | In adjusting the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave him no | greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up | the stock" | | -- ch 11, wealth of nations. "[Landlords] are | the only one of the three orders whose revenue costs them neither | labour nor care, but comes to them, as it were, of its own | accord, and independent of any plan or project of their own. That | indolence, which is the natural effect of the ease and security | of their situation, renders them too often, not only ignorant, | but incapable of that application of mind" | | -- ch 11, wealth of nations. | zajio1am wrote: | These are good points for original meaning of 'landlords', i.e. | ones who lease land (fixed-amount natural resource), but does | not make sense for landlords that lease houses or apartments | (capital product). | WaitWaitWha wrote: | How will this system work for those - who do not have a smart | phone, - who do not have a smart phone with Biometric identity | verification, - who do not have a credit card to provide? | | If I was landlord, I would definitely what to automate | everything. But, this feels like it would exclude people who | cannot fulfill all of the above. | eigenvalue wrote: | People like that are generally not going to be desirable | tenants for landlords. And in a high cost city like NYC, they | very likely wouldn't be able to pass the income and credit | verification anyway. | AJRF wrote: | I recently moved house. | | I was previously living with my friend, and we had an agreement I | pay sometime before the end of the month. He gave me a contract | and said you'll need this, just because when you go to the next | place they will ask you for your previous contract. He found it | online, it was boiler plate and we agreed verbally I pay him | whenever during the month. We we're really good friends, and I | lived there for 3 years without a single issue. | | Then when I tried to rent a new place, the agent asked for lots | of details, that we're then passed on to a referencing agency. I | gave them all they needed. I have a maxed out credit rating on | the 2 providers I can easily check in the UK. My salary was 4x | the yearly rent. And the referencing company failed me. | | They failed me because I didn't always pay the rent on the 20th | of the month. Now granted - that is what my contract said, but it | wasn't the reality of the situation. | | Of course the referencing company never asked me about this and | just stamped RISK on my profile. They said they couldn't override | the software - which I don't believe at all. | | Luckily my agent was able to call the new landlord, we all got on | a call, my agent, my friend, me and the landlord. | | The landlord laughed on the call and said how stupid that was, | and approved my application. The call lasted 1 minute and 28 | seconds. | | I have a deep knot in my stomach about where all this software | takes us. In the pursuit of scale, we lose all sense of nuance | and humanity. I was lucky in my case, but I know others aren't. | It's going to cost us dearly. | benburleson wrote: | Further, companies already exist [https://carpe.io/] that mine | your online presence to help calculate your risk score. | NoOneNew wrote: | Humanity is the sickness. Only through software and bureaucracy | can humans cure their ailment and achieve the proper goals. | It's 2021, get with the times. | brundolf wrote: | /s, surely? | NoOneNew wrote: | Does /s mean cheeky? I seriously have no clue what /s | means. | brundolf wrote: | It means sarcasm | newsclues wrote: | Humanity is fine but we've tolerated cancers that have gained | control of the brain and are running the show. | NoOneNew wrote: | I'm perfectly okay with AI and algorithms being used as red | flaggers to help a human find out _what needs immediate | attention_ or even potential concerns. I 'm 100% against | algorithms and AI making the actual decisions. | nicbou wrote: | I am far more concerned about software automating what used | to be left to human judgement. AI will judge us just the | same, just faster and with no way to appeal to common sense. | fouric wrote: | I'm pretty sure GP was being sarcastic. | NoOneNew wrote: | Mildly | NoOneNew wrote: | I'm being cheeky, but at the same time, it's a serious | issue. AI used in these fashions are just going to be | bureaucracy on steroids, however, as you mention, less | chances for appeals. | | And on an extremely serious note, I am utterly terrified | how many people treat, "Well the AI/algorithm says xyz, it | must be true. Got to believe the math/data." I'm not | kidding, that's my fear. People blindly follow the almighty | algorithms. It's just another form of religion and worship. | And even more seriousness, atheists are fantastic at | rationalizing their blind dogmatic worship over algorithms. | IanCal wrote: | This is why there are or are incoming (long time since I've | looked at the details) rules in the EU about fully automated | decision making. | | It may not have covered this example, but it's a good reminder | of the reasons why this kind of legislation exists. | | https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo... | | (edit - grammar) | sigg3 wrote: | Can't really blame software for housing policy. That's a | societal issue. | AJRF wrote: | But the landlord (the societal arbiter) agreed in this case - | the software denied me. Very much an issue of the software in | this case. | brundolf wrote: | The issue is that policy alone is insufficient. Humans can | look past the policy's rigidity when necessary; software | can't. | TeMPOraL wrote: | More than that - policy is _designed_ to be interpreted by | humans, to be bent or overriden when needed. There are | processes in place for that - from a simple handshake deal, | through a written contract amendment, to the court system. | When software is tasked with enforcing policies, there is | no bending, no overriding, no special cases. In this way, | software _breaks_ the policies. | rdgthree wrote: | (Caretaker cofounder.) | | I've been rejected/failed/banned by an emotionless machine a | handful of times, and I don't know that anything else has made | me feel quite so hopeless. I like to think a similar knot in my | stomach keeps me honest. | | Thankfully, one of our fundamental incentives as a property | management business is to get _more_ quality tenants approved | for _more_ apartments. If there are high quality renters | qualified to sign a lease and fill a vacancy, mistakenly | rejecting them directly impacts a landlord 's bottom line. So | we're motivated beyond altruism to get this right, which is | important. | | Along these lines (and perhaps surprisingly, relative to the | automation in the post), our income verification product is | decidely _not_ fully automated. Non-salaried income reporting | can be extremely tricky, and we 've run into a number of | renters with reliable income on a monthly basis that doesn't | fit neatly onto a bi-weekly paystub. In those circumstances, we | work with them manually to sort out how we can best present it | to landlords on an application. | nly wrote: | Why did you pay him on willy nilly days instead of just setting | up a recurring standing order and being done with it? | kaishiro wrote: | Why does this matter if all parties involved were satisfied | with the arrangement? | pishpash wrote: | It's still a risk, the new landlord may not want an | unstable source of income even if the previous one did. | [deleted] | hguant wrote: | Because for certain professions income is reliable but not | set to a 14 day pay cycle. | | Could be that OP is a freelance author and is paid depending | on when stories are picked up, or is contracting for multiple | employers and has an irregular payment schedule depending on | their invoicing. | | Not everyone conforms to the same set of employment/fiscal | assumptions we (here meaning "educated white collar US tech | workers") may have. | tobiasSoftware wrote: | I have a similar story. I got married and my wife moved to my | state and was in the middle of the process of getting a license | when COVID hit. She had gotten a learner's permit to practice | for the driving test, and it expired but got extended due to | COVID. We decided it was finally time to sort out the mess. | | However, to get that learner's permit required her to take a | couple written tests. We were told she would have to retake | those tests because the software had them down as expired. Then | when she went to take the test, they told her she didn't need | to because she had already taken them! Our second visit they | finally sorted it out but we had to wait multiple hours while | they got managers involved to assist us. | rurp wrote: | I had a similar DMV experience. My login for the online site | wasn't working so I went to reset the password, but after | entering my information it said I had no account. Ok I | thought, I'll create a new account. Of course when I tried | that, using the _same_ information I tried to reset the | password with, it failed saying that I already had an | account. | | There was no direct way to contact anyone on the website and | the person I spoke to at the physical office told me to | contact the state headquarters. After multiple calls and | emails I finally got ahold of someone involved in the | website... who completely blew me off. | | Every year when my registration came due I'd give it a few | more tries, hoping to avoid a trip to the office. Finally | after almost a decade I got someone to actually fix my | account. Even then they didn't admit that anything was wrong | on their end, they tried to gaslight me and pretend it was | working this whole time. | | This was enraging and the only cost was some inconvenience. | I'm terrified of this happening with a critical service. | stormbrew wrote: | There's a lot of privilege involved in being able to navigate | these kinds of social overrides, so the idea that it's _good_ | that you can get around stupid rules like this by talking to a | person is.. only really true for some people. | | What's wrong here isn't the idea that "the rules" could be | applied evenly to everyone (that's actually a good thing). It's | this kind of incredibly narrow requirement on housing where | landlords get to dig deep into your financials to the point of | knowing when/how you paid for things. | | That's gross, and should not be allowed. It's almost certainly | a part of many people's vicious cycles into poverty. It's also, | as far as I know, a really recent development and part of the | general trend towards more and more invasive surveillance in | daily life. | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _They said they couldn 't override the software - which I | don't believe at all._ | | This is why I'm worried by - no, I _hate_ - the automation of | bureaucracy, governmental and business alike. Software is | giving bureaucrats the perfect escape hatch. "I'm sorry, but | The System won't let me". | | The System won't let a low-level clerk fix the mistake some | algorithm made. You escalate to the manager, but The System | won't let them do it either. If you're lucky, maybe they'll try | to escalate to the main office on the other side of the | country, someone there may or may not be able to fix the issue. | If you're lucky. If you're not, the manager has a perfect, non- | offensive way to refuse: "I'm sorry, The System won't let me". | | Here on HN, we all know how The System works. A bunch of half- | assed business logic, wrapped in a bloated webapp, developed by | some outsourced team of code monkeys, who on their good day | mostly care about playing with the newest JavaScript fad, | inflicting yet another round of suffering on thousands of | employees and millions of customers. One of those broken | business rules blows a fuse, your debit card gets locked out, | and there's nobody within 200 kilometers of you with the access | rights to clear a flag. And no, the devs who maintain The | System don't have them either; they're just monkeys in the | outsourcing firm that was the best at underbidding on the | tender. | | (I'm totally not talking about my wife's bank, that managed to | spontaneously block her card _and_ on-line banking just before | weekend, and took a lot of fighting to undo its own mistake.) | | > _Luckily my agent was able to call the new landlord, we all | got on a call, my agent, my friend, me and the landlord._ | | That's why we need to have people in the loop. Empowered | people. To fix the mistakes, file down the corner cases. | | Automation of corporate bureaucracy is trying to fit everyone | into well-defined and heavily optimized flows, whether it makes | sense or not. If you fall off the assembly line, the gears will | crush you. | bombcar wrote: | You can always override the system somewhere, but nobody gets | fired for doing the System. | bko wrote: | > Software is giving bureaucrats the perfect escape hatch. | "I'm sorry, but The System won't let me". | | In the parent story, its in everyone's interest that the | person was able to sign the agreement. Saying "the system | won't let me" to screw him over makes no sense. There will | always be overrides or discretion involved. | | If anything an automated system would help people from | getting screwed over. If you check all the system's boxes and | someone still doesn't want to rent to you, maybe he's being | biased based on a protected class. Without automation, | someone can just make something up or just keep you in limbo | or sit on your application | mathgladiator wrote: | Computer says no: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n_Ty_72Qds | [deleted] | gentleman11 wrote: | All my online dashboards I deal with for various things are | buggy and inflexible. Whatever the problem is though, you can | usually phone a human who can fix it. If you get rid of humans, | it's just creating a nightmare | perlpimp wrote: | We already know how this happens when Google cancels your | account, without any warning. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Want a sneak peek of the nightmare? Plenty of companies are | now introducing conversational bots on their phone lines, | desperately trying to prevent you from getting in touch with | a human. And unlike traditional voice menus, pressing 0 or | mashing the keypad doesn't work on them. | | I recently wasted a good 10 minutes trying to reach a flesh- | and-blood consultant of a phone company, _and I actually | wanted to buy stuff from them_. I just needed a human to make | sure it 's on the record I'm requesting a non-default service | (FTTH Internet with external ONT, so that I could swap a | proper router in place of the piece of garbage they normally | provide). | | Their fancy bot actually understood what I wanted when I | repeatedly said "I want to be connected with a consultant" - | it kept replying, "I understand you want to talk to a | consultant; before we do that, can you tell me [insert some | random idiotic question]?". I almost blew a fuse there. I | only persisted because for technical reasons, I couldn't go | with other providers. | rurp wrote: | This kind of behavior should be unacceptable by companies | whose services are essential, which definitely includes | ISPs these days. If it's some company I can do without I'm | really quick to drop them when I run into this sort of | thing, even if it means going without something I want. I | just hate giving money to sleezy companies. | compsciphd wrote: | serious Q. how in the world would any credit agency know what | day you are paying the rent? | | In the US, I don't believe any credit agency has insight into | my personal bank accounts re size (I think?) or when things are | paid to whom they are paid or the like (pretty sure about | this). they know about my debts, but unless the landlord puts | me into collection, I ca't imagine a reason for my rent | appearing on the report (it's been a while since I looked at | one, but dont remember seeing them) | mlinhares wrote: | Credit agencies can 100% know when you pay you rent as the | receiver can send this information to them. Credit cards also | say when you pay so they can keep track of when you're | delinquent or late for payments. | Broken_Hippo wrote: | Credit agencies - at least in the US - really don't know | when you pay the rent, though, unless the landlord reports | this. Same for payments: This is a big part of the reason | you cannot simply live within your means [1] and have good | credit later in life. | | You won't. | | Many companies - utilities, landlords, hospitals, and so on | - simply won't report anything unless it is negative. The | negatives are usually sending something to in-house | collections, a collection agency, or filing a civil suit to | get the money. | | Loans, in general, will report. This includes credit cards. | Some of the buy here/pay here places won't report, though, | so you get no help on your credit. | | [1] What I mean by "live within your means" is to simply do | things like pay cash for a used car, rent an affordable | place, and simply pay your bills on time. | frumper wrote: | I think the person you are replying to is surprised that a | landlord would bother reporting that information to a | credit agency. I have never heard of that, and after using | some of the bigger name property management companies in my | area as both a renter and landlord, it just isn't normal | here. | AJRF wrote: | OP here - Estate agent asked for 6 months bank statements, | which I assume was requested by the referencing agency. | | I don't think is common practise in the U.K, but I asked | around and lots of people told me it is more common that the | larger agencies ask for it, plus it was for an apartment in a | very competitive development so I feel like it might have | been a forcing function to reduce the amount of applicants | but that is speculation on my part. | literallycancer wrote: | Why not ask the bank to confirm that you make enough, | without revealing how much you make and your whole spending | history? | AJRF wrote: | In competitive rental markets, there will always be | another tenant who will not be "difficult" in the eyes of | the agent who will snatch the place up from you if you | start going off the beaten path. | | Before I got my place there were 3 other apartments in | the same complex I verbally agreed to and then agent | called back to say it had been taken. Not sure if you've | rented in likes of London, NY or SF before but the | competition can be intense. | | Look it sucks that I had to do that, in an ideal world we | could have done what you said, but I valued getting the | place over my reservations of handing over bank | statements. | FourthProtocol wrote: | I was asked for 12 months' worth of statements for a place | I wanted to rent in Islington. I got them printed out at | the bank, and then spent an entire day with a Sharpie and a | ruler and redacted every payee and amount in each of those | statements. The approved my rental contract without a peep. | | A potential employer once also wanted statements - I think | 6 months' worth, and I did the same. HR pushed back but | legal backed them down rather quickly. I think these people | ask because most just comply without question. | jollybean wrote: | "Estate agent asked for 6 months bank statements, " | | WTF. | | That's a crazy practice. Paystub maybe, but bank | statements? My gosh. | squeaky-clean wrote: | I've been looking for a new apartment in NYC and the | place I applied for wanted 2 month's of paystubs and 2 | month's of bank statements. Most agencies I've seen | request this or more. It's insane but if you find a place | you like things sell so quickly here that you have no | choice but to play by their rules or leave the city. | | Unrelated rant but the reason I've been looking is my | current landlord has taken over 35 days to send me a | renewal contract. Go figure that 10 minutes after texting | him I'm going through the credit check for a new | apartment he sends me the updated document. | j1dopeman wrote: | NY places limits on landlords such as: cannot consider or | even look at past evictions, cannot ask for more than a | month deposit, and others. Also they completely left | landlords out in the cold for rent for over a year and | counting. NY is extremely tenant friendly and it can cost | a lot if you get a bad tenant. Year(s) of unpaid rent, | legal fees, and money for repairs. | munk-a wrote: | I don't know where in the world you are - but the | American solution to this problem are a series of | organizations that constantly ingest a massive amount of | financial data around what transactions you're executing | and then sell it to the lender without your knowledge. | I'd be happy to be the person actually handing over so | much of my financial data instead of it being harvested | without my consent. | AJRF wrote: | Hey I don't make the rules - but if I don't play by them | I lose a place I really wanted to live in. Sucks, but | that's life. | 123pie123 wrote: | I was renting about 5 years ago and even back then the | agency asked me for about 6-12months of bank statements | checking the payment dates and probably checking if I could | afford it | devoutsalsa wrote: | I wonder if they have access to your balances via Plaid, | which seems to be popping up all over the dang place. I | should look more closely at their terms of service. | rStar wrote: | does the software lie about the rats? people are better at that | type of soft skill. | korethr wrote: | This sounds great from a tenant's perspective, too. I can't speak | for all renters, but speaking for myself, I have have been | frustrated by all the little points of friction named in this | article. | | However, I should not have had to go to the company's webpage, | find no hint of the tenant side of this transaction, get no | answer from the chat box, do some google searches, end up back at | the blog, and go digging through the blog in order to find | apartment.app to be the other half with all the magical UI | improvements described in the OP. Afterward, of course I found | the link in the footer of the company's main page. | | UI suggestion. Make it easier for prospective tenants (we are | your product, after all) who land on the landlord side to find | the renter's side, and vice versa. | | IMO, there is no greater sin in business than to leave a prospect | who has learned of your prodcut/service and wishes to do business | with you bereft of someone who will shut up and take his money. | umrashrf wrote: | I just suggested this to my broker in Toronto yesterday. And he | wants to do a startup with me on this. | notorandit wrote: | All this doesn't mean that the software is better than any human | broker but simply that _those_ humans were way worse than | whatever software has been used. | at_a_remove wrote: | About fifteen years ago, I set up a student rental website at the | behest of the rental management. The list of things they wanted | to automate, even then, was astonishing. I have seen this in | other situations and it has led to a kind of maxim for me -- | never underestimate the number of people who think that you can | automate their jobs on their behalf and that they will still | _have_ those jobs at the end of the process. | | I don't like putting people out of work but that bit about | replacing someone with a shell script is not entirely inaccurate | at times. | coding123 wrote: | > Renters would pay us to take over the remainder of their lease | obligation, we'd find a new qualified tenant and get the | landlord's approval for a lease transfer or sublease. If we | weren't able to find a new tenant, we'd pay the rent until the | end of the lease. | | Also pretty nice that you do that, but one thing I would | recommend is immediately not allow any landlords that require | such evil practices and be banned from your system. | mertd wrote: | What is the evil practice? | unanswered wrote: | Well, it's either requiring rent to be paid throughout the | entire lease term or not allowing leases to be randomly | transferred to unqualified tenants. Does it really matter at | that point which one GP meant? | hammock wrote: | A lease is a contract where you agree to pay throughout the | entire term. That's evil? | | Most municipalities at least in the USA also have tenant- | friendly laws on that books that mandate either or both of: | | a) landlords are disallowed from refusing reasonable | sublease (e.g. one that passes the same credit check etc | that you did) | | b) landlords must release you from the remainder of a lease | if you leave and a reasonably suitable replacement tenant | is found | fartcannon wrote: | Now do it for real estate agents. | [deleted] | rememberlenny wrote: | I'm a huge fan of Rezi which has a very similar experience to my | knowledge. They are able to reduce broker fee/rents because they | can assure a reduced time where apartments are unrented. | | https://www.rentrezi.com/ | [deleted] | standardUser wrote: | Apartment hunting is the most inefficient "purchasing" decision I | have ever had to make, and the one most likely to end up with a | severely sub-optimal outcome. There's some good ideas here that | would at least facilitate efficiently viewing more apartments. | But there's still so much extremely _basic_ information that | potential renters either cannot get about a unit or have to jump | through hoops to get. Noise issues, pest issues, construction and | renovation details, information about how the management company | operates, light levels, info about neighbors and on and on. | Ninety percent of the important information about a rental unit | isn 't discovered until the weeks and months _after_ a lease has | been signed, and I am desperate for someone to fix this problem. | benmanns wrote: | Agreed. There's not enough disincentive for wasting potential | renters time filtering through listings or even touring | apartments. | paxys wrote: | During my apartment search in San Francisco I found that it was | basically impossible to know whether a unit was covered by rent | control or not. You'd have to explicitly ask the landlord, and | even then they'd be cagey about it. | baby wrote: | I just moved to SF and I just used craigslist and always | asked if it was rent controlled in my intro mail. What's the | point of visiting a place if it's not? | clairity wrote: | you can just ask when the building was built. any building | built before 1978 in LA and 1979 in SF (iirc) is rent- | controlled. you can also look up the build date via parcel | maps on the county assessor's website (e.g., | https://portal.assessor.lacounty.gov/ ). | bytematic wrote: | You have to convince the property managers because they are | purposefully gating that information. They want you to ask | questions so they can gauge your interest and deny you early, | also the benefit of not excluding the "right" people. And yes | there is a lot of room for discrimination here | meristem wrote: | UX question here: I noticed on the blog's screen shots that "self | checkout, but for apartments" is used. How did you come up with | "self-checkout" as the action? Checkout seems so far away in time | re: the process flow. What was your users' mental model? | philipodonnell wrote: | Great writeup. | mschuster91 wrote: | Landlords being able to require proof of no evictions in rent | history makes sense (even though it absolutely makes life worse | for people who fell on any form of hardship), but why are | landlords even allowed to demand proof of no felonies?! | codenesium wrote: | Probably for the same reason your employer does. Not saying | it's fair to discriminate against people who have paid their | debt to society but I wouldn't be crazy about having a rapist | or murderer neighbor. | mschuster91 wrote: | I'm German. Landlords here aren't allowed to check criminal | backgrounds as are employers (with the exception of jobs | dealing with children and valuable objects). | | The idea behind that is that recidivism is best prevented by | letting people be normal parts of society (=being able to | work and live in peace) once they have served their term. | agentdrtran wrote: | Because they write the laws and not renters | dave5104 wrote: | > but why are landlords even allowed to demand proof of no | felonies?! | | As someone who has worked on tenant screening software, | landlords typically care about a criminal history involving sex | offenses or drug manufacturing. In case of recidivism, the | former creates liability from other tenants if issues arise | during tenancy, and the latter has potential for property | destruction and/or harm to neighboring units. | | There are also typically time limits on how far "back" they can | look, typically 5-7 years at the most. | anonAndOn wrote: | How does bankruptcy sound? The discovery phase of the civil | lawsuit will uncover that you allowed a convicted sex | offender/drug dealer/murderer to move in next door and you are | now financially responsible for the victim's damages, pain and | suffering. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | Because sometimes felons use their place of residence as the | center of the location of their felonies? And sometimes those | felonies are against nearby people? If you had an apartment | complex, you wouldn't want to rent to a breaking-and-entering | specialist, or even a car thief. You wouldn't want to rent to a | meth manufacturer or distributor. And you wouldn't want to rent | to a serial rapist. | | Eventually it just becomes easier to just say "no felons" than | to try to figure out whether this particular brand of felony is | going to negatively impact you or your other residents. | | On the other hand, felons have to live somewhere... | csours wrote: | This is a bit of a tangent, but finding reliable ratings for | apartments is a complete quagmire. Many many apartments have | extremely poor ratings, or boosted ratings that are not | believable. | | I wonder how much of this is due to the fact that a significant | portion of rental situations end with a major conflict and even | uneventful apartment living has some portion of minor conflict | due to yearly rent increases. | __sy__ wrote: | We started Seam (YC S20) a year ago to take on the problem of | programmatic access to physical spaces (apartments, single-family | homes, commercial buildings...etc). | | Basically one API that can open any door (smart locks, elevators, | commercial buildings...etc). We're still in private beta but feel | free to reach out if you're struggling with programmatic access. | | tbh, it's baffling that in 2021, this problem is still so | difficult to solve. As a last point, we generally recommend | against key-exhange solutions. From our experience at Sonder, | people forget to return the keys and it creates a lot logistical | headaches. You then have to re-key the doors...etc. | baybal2 wrote: | Code locks? | __sy__ wrote: | Yeah that's one option and does present the advantage of | knowing which exact individual may have entered the premises | (assuming one person = one code). We support most | brands/model of smart locks (Yale, Schlage...etc) and | standardize code programming across them despite differences | that may exist at the protocol layer. Here's our API doc on | it if you want to learn more: | https://docs.getseam.com/#access-codes | dempsey wrote: | I know very large REITs that use Kwikset Smart Keys. They have | a dozen keys and just reset to a different of the dozen after | every move out. Tens of thousands of homes and never had a | problem. It's security through obscurity. Plus locks are easy | to break/bypass for someone that's motivated to do so. It's the | casual crime of opportunity that you can guard against. | __sy__ wrote: | Are you referring to smart locks with unique codes or the | Kwikset solution that consists of pulling out the cylinder | and putting a new one in? | EricE wrote: | Nope - as Kevin points out all you need is a new key and | their tool that basically "blanks" the lock, then the next | key you insert resets the lock to operate with that key. | It's pretty slick. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | SmartKey is a mechanical lock that is rekeyable without | removing the cylinder. You unlock with the old key, insert | a tool to release the internal wafers, then insert the new | key and it repositions the wafers to match the key. | __sy__ wrote: | oh right! Yeah it's pretty neat actually (for anyone | interested[1]). Unfortunately, it does require physical | presence/labor (i.e. $$$) by whoever has the master reset | tool. For Airbnb's or even self-tours, that's kind of a | non-starter. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5MQz3JjZl8&ab_channe | l=Kwiks... | dempsey wrote: | When you perform a move out or move in inspection, you | change the key. It's super easy. The reset tool can fit | in your wallet or glove compartment. It's a big change | versus having to change the cylinder as in the past. | Having to manage a load of electronic locks is likely | more costly. Again, this is long-term rentals not short- | term. | | As for self-tours, they make electronic lockboxes. | They've been around forever and used by every MLS. | __sy__ wrote: | I'm not going to try to convince you that key-exchanges | are bad for short-lived visits (whether electronic | lockboxes or not). We just know from experience doing | millions of these for a large company that this is very | problematic at times and you're better off with a remote | controlled solutions that doesn't involve anyone having | any physical key. | dempsey wrote: | I'm not arguing with you. I'm referring to long-term | rentals. Your initial post doesn't make such a | distinction. | [deleted] | jbrun wrote: | Breather tried to do that out of Montreal and went bankrupt | this year, not sure how much overlap there is with your system. | __sy__ wrote: | Yes I spoke to Julien (their founder) back when we started | the company. Nice guys. He gave us a lot of insightful tips | and frankly wished we would have existed back when they got | started. Their business legitimately got killed by covid. | | ps: your personal site is really interesting. | eni9889 wrote: | How exactly do you guys connect to the locks? | __sy__ wrote: | Depends a bit on the lock or access system. As of right now, | most smart locks out there are still using a combination of | zigbee, zwave, or bluetooth. This means that if you want | remote control, you need to bridge them over to TCP/IP. We | have a multiprotocol hub that we've developed for this. The | hub itself isn't always required per say. For example, we're | starting to see wifi locks. They generally have much lower | battery life, but they eliminate the need for additional | hardware, which is great. For bluetooth locks (e.g. August), | we're looking at also building a single mobile SDK that would | work with the various brands. This is really tricky because | this requires a lot of reverse engineering. | EricE wrote: | Ironically the company that produces the lockboxes used in | the story for this item also has door locks that use the same | one time code mechanism (similar to Google Auth). No network | connectivity required. I was never interested in putting a | lock that had any kind of Internet requirement, but now I'm | very interested in this one. | | Their site if you didn't pick it up from the original | article: https://www.igloohome.co/en-us/ | [deleted] | dangerwill wrote: | Speaking of logistical headaches, what happens with your system | when the power goes out in a building? | __sy__ wrote: | Right now we have a multi-protocol hub with cellular and | battery back-up. So the short answer is... nothing? | dangerwill wrote: | Nothing until the battery runs out. I'm just thinking of | situations like Texas, the East Coast hurricane season, the | West Coast fire season, etc where power cuts can last up to | a week. | | Or what happens when GCP/AWS/Azure have a bad day and you | lose connectivity with your API servers? | __sy__ wrote: | yeah the battery only lasts 24 hours, though I suspect we | could eventually implement a low-power mode in our | firmware to stretch that quite a bit. To be honest, I'm | also not sure to what extend we want to over index black- | swan events [1] as part of our product roadmap. | | Your second point about GCP/AWS/Azure going down is | really valid. When we started the company, we saw a few | off-the-shelf gateways that relied on a permanent MQTT | connection to function correctly, and from our Sonder | experience, we knew that this was a non-starter for some | of our early customers. Instead, we ended up creating our | own hub and we run a ton of logic that runs entirely | locally. For example, if an Airbnb reservation comes in, | the hub immediately receives the door lock programming | instructions even if the reservation is far out in the | future. Our hub doesn't program the lock yet, but when | the reservation time window arrives, the lock gets | programmed by the hub irrespective of whether the | internet or AWS is up/down. | | [1] well at this point, it's questionable whether we | should refer to, for example, wildfires as Black Swan | events. But I think you'll agree that most people aren't | interested in touring a new home or staying at an Airbnb | when the town next door is on fire... | travoc wrote: | 24 hour power outages are not a black swan event anywhere | in the world. | dangerwill wrote: | Oh does your company only work with short term rentals | (airbnb) and showings? I checked your website and came | away with the impression that you might have landlords | installing these units on long term rentals as well as | business locations potentially. That does lower the | stakes here significantly than what I was thinking. | | And yeah props for that solution to intermittent | connectivity issues :) | vsareto wrote: | How much is the technology around this mentioned in the | lease agreement? | | My current complex specified that I had to supply internet | and some other things for their smart hub service, although | that turned out to not be the case (it's not on my network | and works), but it was really weird to have that clause but | it not match reality because I was effectively signing a | document saying I was responsible for it. | __sy__ wrote: | is this with SmartRent? My hunch is that they're trying | to lower their cellular data costs by having you connect | their units to wifi. I had no heard of this being | surfaced as a lease-agreement clause though. | | Fwiw, we haven't run into cases yet where landlords want | to leave our hub inside a unit once it has been rented | out. I think there are pros/cons to it from a | security/privacy standpoint. It can also be very | convenient and reduce certain OPEX costs (e.g. | insurance). But there are horror stories out there of | some of the cheap OEM hubs that get deployed [1] and we | (Seam) would want to have a solid conversation internally | first to see what's the right approach here. | | [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/02/smart-home-hub- | flaws-unloc... | vsareto wrote: | Yeah, SmartRent | | Here's the wording if you're interested: | | https://i.imgur.com/qF22wG9.jpg | | Plus even though it says "If you elect to purchase..." | half-way down, I basically had no option but to walk away | from the lease entirely. They wouldn't remove them, turn | them off and replace with a physical lock, or anything | else. | EricE wrote: | If you have a smart lock that doesn't require Internet | connectivity then power or network availability is not an | issue. From the OP: https://www.igloohome.co/en-us/ | | It's the most innovative approach to smart locks I have ever | seen and for this one nugget along I'm very grateful for the | link to the original story! | __sy__ wrote: | Just a quick caveat that for non-consumer contexts, | completely offline stuff doesn't cut it. The enterprise | customers we have do want to get status reports for the | devices (e.g. battery level, lock/unlocked status, which | code was punched in...etc). There are good reasons for | this, especially considering some operate fleets of 10K+ | door locks across 3 continents. | EricE wrote: | Absolutely. For smaller/medium sites where you want some | accountability but real time isn't required there are | solutions out there like CyberLock - to get historical | information you wait for keys to either check in as they | charge or you can run around and touch the locks with a | key and the system will do a status update. | | It's not as convenient as wired/connected systems, but | it's also a fraction of the price too. You can pick | what's more important - real time or price :) | nradov wrote: | Whether someone returned the keys or not is largely irrelevant. | The prior occupants could have made extra copies. | __sy__ wrote: | I disagree. Whether the prior occupant or the property | management company has extra sets of keys, you generally | don't want some random prospective tenant out there to have | the keys to a unit that you will eventually want to rent out | to another individual. For Airbnb's/STR's, same problem; | guests returning to a unit much later to carry out illegal | activities is rather well documented at this point. Across | the board, it's not worth the logistical pain and/or | liability risk. In the case of a prior tenant, you generally | know who the person is...etc. There are edge cases for sure | (e.g. evictions) but it's generally less risky. | pedrosorio wrote: | You agree with the person you replied to. They are saying | guests may return to carry out illegal activity _even if | they returned the keys_ because they could have just made | copies. | __sy__ wrote: | My initial comment only said that, in our experience, | it's a bad idea to use physical key-exchange system for | short-term visits of a physical space. Key copies & key | returns being two examples of problematic cases. I only | brought up key returns in my initial comment because | that's the one that caused the most headaches at Sonder. | Most people, it turns out, are honest but also forgetful | :) The key-copy potentially exposes you to a lot more | liability though... | minsc__and__boo wrote: | Yep. Bad actors will still find a way circumvent the | system, either by copying keys or other means. It's a | matter of risk and liability mitigation, not prevention. | | I'd be curious to know if you're building a reputation | system for renters/rentees (users), since that would | provide value in such a market to fight it. | __sy__ wrote: | We are not. This is mostly because we are an | infrastructure company that takes care of bridging the | air-gap between the devices out there and the software | applications that want to use them. Whether the locks are | used for hospitality, self-storage access, or rentals is | somewhat dependent on the context, and there's a lot of | complexity that is unique to each vertical. We think our | (beta) customers do a better job at this than we could. | benmanns wrote: | Do you have a recommendation on a quality smart lock for home | use? Some ideal mix of security, style, open/compatible | software. | __sy__ wrote: | hm, it's a good question. I (personally) really like Yale | devices, but I hate the touchscreens and would prefer | something with physical key buttons. I'm also generally | against locks that connect directly to wifi because the | batteries run out so quickly. As far as the type of lock, | mortise locks are so cool but super expensive and most U.S. | homes would need to change their doors to have one. Maybe a | level lock or a simple dead-bolt does the trick. | __sy__ wrote: | I thought a bit more about your question. There's | surprisingly not much unbiased research out there that | correctly points out the pros/cons of each system. I'll try | to write something soon and post it. | EricE wrote: | The same company that provided the lockboxes from the | original article has smart locks that use the same rotating | one time code mechanism - and the locks don't require | internet connectivity. A huge plus! | | https://www.igloohome.co/en-us/ | | I have had zero interest in using other smart locks - | especially ones that require network connectivity of any | sort, but this might be one that would be worth considering. | dempsey wrote: | This is interesting. Thx. The problem we've always had with | smart locks at scale is connectivity headaches, which | require a technical person as advanced or more than a | locksmith. | __sy__ wrote: | > I have had zero interest in using other smart locks - | especially ones that require network connectivity of any | sort | | I think I used to agree with that sentiment, but then I | realized that I can remotely control stuff for things like | grocery deliveries (which as you point out Igloo can do | while technically offline!). To be clear though, just | because igloohome's lock is technically offline, it does | not mean it's necessarily secure if there is a hole in | their API auth. | EricE wrote: | > To be clear though, just because igloohome's lock is | technically offline, it does not mean it's necessarily | secure if there is a hole in their API auth. | | Sure! But it sure cuts down on implementation complexity, | and complexity is where security goes to die :) | jmuguy wrote: | We've gone through a bunch (including the Igloohome locks | mentioned in the post) and landed on Yale's Assure line, | specifically the YRD216 model with a physical keypad (not the | touchscreen). Deployed in 100s of homes now (we're also | property managers) with really no issue. We use Z-Wave to | control but their modular system allows for Zigbee as well. | | I would avoid the Schlage "Smart Deadbolt" model. At least | when it comes to remote control they're pretty awful. | (They're also hideous imo) | __sy__ wrote: | I agree 110% with this! The touchscreens confuse new people | not used to it. As far as Schlage, yeah... let's just say | there's a few folks in the Home Assistant community (and us | too) who are not super impressed with their protocol | implementation. | | btw which z-wave controller do you guys use for the Assure? | jmuguy wrote: | We're using Smartthings, specifically the old graph API | that gives somewhat easy programmatic access. Very | interested in what yall are doing with Seam (we spoke for | a little bit at the virtual event YC had earlier this | year). With Samsung I'm always worried some new VP is | going to going to get shuffled in and decide that | Smartthings has had its day in the sun. | __sy__ wrote: | Yes I remember our convo! Also, i really don't like to be | the bearer of bad news, but I was talking to their | Venture team and unfortunately that ship has already | sailed. They've sold the hardware business to Aeotek and | are progressively scaling down the team :( | | Ping me at sy@getseam.com and lets see if I can get you | going with some beta units. | azdle wrote: | lol, no. We're hiring as fast as we can right now for | software devs: https://smartthings.pinpointhq.com/ | __sy__ wrote: | ah! I stand corrected. I swear I had two calls in the | last 3-4 months with some Samsung Next folks where it was | like, "yeah, we're kind of outta this game." | azdle wrote: | Probably just a miscommunication, we definitely seem to | have gotten completely out of hardware (I wouldn't really | know, I was never really involved in any of the hardware | side of things), but the software side of things is going | stronger than ever. | benmanns wrote: | We used this pre-COVID to get out of a Brooklyn lease and had a | fantastic experience (back when it was Flip Instant). Flip | basically charged 1 month rent and guaranteed a fill or they'd | pay the rest (6 months) of my lease. Compared to our landlord who | wanted 1.75x rent, up to 2.75x rent if not filled immediately, | after significant negotiation. Hiring a broker myself would have | likely cost 1x rent or more anyways with all the risk on us. | | I really like the service provider + financial underwriting | combination, where you get basically an SLA for them providing a | service, where they take 100% of the risk after the fee. | e1g wrote: | The landlord is under no obligation to accept anyone this | service finds, so this startup guarantees an outcome they | cannot control. It might be a way to build awareness and | goodwill, but they are burning VC capital to offer a service | that is either fundamentally unsustainable or mispriced. | crazygringo wrote: | Obviously you're not going to use it if your landlord doesn't | allow subleases, and landlords are also usually pretty | upfront about approval requirements for a sublease. | | I've never heard of a landlord not allowing a subletter to | convert to a full lease upon original lease expiration. | | I mean, the alternative is to forego a month or two of rent | while you find a new tenant. Unless there's a horrible | problem with the existing subletter's credit, but then they | probably wouldn't have gotten the sublease in the first | place. | | I'm not saying it's never happened, but it's going to be | rare. I don't really see anything unsustainable or mispriced | about this at all. There are already other companies doing it | as well in NYC, e.g.: | | https://doorkee.com/ | e1g wrote: | The difference from Doorkee, or any matchmaking service, is | that they do not guarantee to pay your rent for six months | if a) they can't find someone within a month or b) your | landlord doesn't like them. This bet is highly asymmetric - | they can win 1 month fee (if you sublease tomorrow) but | lose 6x that. I'm also in NYC, and wouldn't underwrite this | gamble two years ago, and absolutely not today. | crazygringo wrote: | It doesn't seem that crazy to me. They say: | | > _We were able to prove that we could make the | financials work so long as we were able to fill the | apartment within around 45 days of taking it over._ | | They're prescreening apartments/leases so they're not | going to take on an apartment they can't turn around in a | month. And honestly, modeling NYC rental supply and | demand according to a number of factors (neighborhood, | price, condition, amenities, etc.) is pretty | straightforward. It's a relatively liquid market. | | And like I said, landlords generally have explicit rules | about tenant qualifications. They're not going to reject | tenants on a whim. Why would they ever say no to a | qualified tenant? That's like McDonald's refusing to sell | you a quarter pounder. | | There's nothing about this that seems obviously | unsustainable at all. | danenania wrote: | "Why would they ever say no to a qualified tenant?" | | I agree with the rest of your comment, but in my | experience landlords in hot markets can be pretty | capricious. If they know they'll have a steady stream of | applicants, many will definitely reject qualified tenants | based on personal whims or to hold out for someone they | see as "more" qualified or more likely to stay long term. | That said, as long as the apartment still gets turned | around quickly then it's not really a threat to this | business model. | [deleted] | rembicilious wrote: | Are you sure about that? It looks to me like they check the | current lease for subletting stipulations. It's literally the | first step under "Sublet your place" on the website. | benmanns wrote: | This is correct. Also NYC leases are pretty standard, and | NYC laws are tenant friendly at least as far as subletting | goes. | e1g wrote: | This is not correct for the current context. You are | thinking about subleasing today. Yes, this is now | friendly. The scenario for OP was handing over the entire | lease in NYC in 2019. At the time, this was entirely up | to the landlord's discretion, and you were legally on the | hook for the full amount. Landlords were not required to | find a new tenant. See explanations here -> | https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/tenants-right- | break-... | nickthemagicman wrote: | As a former landlord, I can say, one of the biggest parts of | the stability of your business is the tenant. | | If someone brought me a tenant with good credit scores, | income, and references, there's no way I would turn them | down. | | Why would they? | slownews45 wrote: | In San Francisco at least I'm not sure this is a true | statement at ALL. | | San Francisco law is that tenants may sublet / add roommates | etc. Landlord has 14 days to object. Objection has to be for | a good reason. At least that's how I've always understood it. | | Can you cite the rule in San Francisco that landlords are | under no obligation to allow subletting? | | https://sfrb.org/topic-no-151-subletting-and-replacement- | roo.... | e1g wrote: | The OP is talking about passing over the lease and the | entire unit. Your own link says that is prohibited even in | SF. | | > nothing in the Rent Ordinance allows a tenant to sublet | or assign the entire unit to a new tenant in violation of a | lease | slownews45 wrote: | The way it works is that just as this software says, the | original tenant remains responsible for the rent through | end of lease term. | | In San Francisco, once all original tenants have left, | landlord can reset the rent to market rate. | | So you can sublet through end of your lease (which is | what most people want to do). After that, you don't care. | matsemann wrote: | Aren't people obliged to minimize their own and the other | part's loss in contracts in the US? | | In my country, me moving out and saying I won't continue to | pay, while the contract end date is still far in the future | would of course be a breach of the contract. But that doesn't | mean the landlord then can let the house sit empty for the | rest of the contract time and force me to cover their loss. | Landlord would instead have to try and minimize their losses | by finding a new tenant, and what I would owe the landlord | would be their costs to do so and the time the apartment | stood empty. | | Edit: "mitigation of damage" might be the US term for it. | From Cornell: _The mitigation of damages doctrine, also known | as the doctrine of avoidable consequences, prevents an | injured party from recovering damages that could have been | avoided through reasonable efforts. The duty to mitigate | damages is most traditionally employed in the areas of tort | and contract law._ To me that reads like if you want to void | the contract, and the landlord doesn 't accept a reasonable | tenant to take over, the landlord might have to carry their | losses themselves. My guess (given laws about renting being | very in favor of tenants) is that there most places even | might be explicit laws allowing the tenant to do this. | khuey wrote: | Yes, that's right. The landlord is required to seek a new | tenant. | e1g wrote: | USA is a big place, but OP is talking about NYC | specifically before COVID. At that time you were liable | for the full amount until the end of the lease. Landlords | could sit on empty boxes and sue you for the entire | amount. Whether they want the hassle is up to them, but | you couldn't compel them to do anything. | | It does sound unfair, but see here for supporting sources | https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/tenants-right- | break-... | albedoa wrote: | Your own link says that NYC landlords are required to | mitigate damages by seeking a new tenant. | e1g wrote: | Yes, as of July 2019, which is not the context of the OP | discussion and why I said "at the time..." | why_only_15 wrote: | July 2019 was pre-covid? | [deleted] | arcticfox wrote: | This probably depends on local laws / lease details, but | doesn't the landlord generally have an obligation to make a | fair effort of filling the vacancy? | | At least with the leases I've signed, if they didn't | intentionally fill a vacancy with a decent candidate they | would be opening themselves up to some contractual legal | exposure | boringg wrote: | Caretaker: The redfin of brokers. Take all the value for | themselves freeze out the brokers (who provide a service but are | universally disdained). Ride that wave of positive news for a | couples years. Eventually everyone will hate the fraction of the | market Caretaker has as they raise prices to make investors happy | and people realize there are problems. | | It's like the same idea of Uber and Lyft. Less human involvement | = better world /S. | ForHackernews wrote: | Good. Freezing out useless middleman occupations is a net | positive for humanity. | | The difference is that cab drivers provide a real and valuable | service, whereas real estate agents are a glorified key safe. | booleandilemma wrote: | I can confirm that taking an Uber from NYC to NJ is much | cheaper than a yellow cab used to be. | | Uber and Lyft are great as long as we don't think about the | drivers they're exploiting. | beisner wrote: | If they bring permanent change to the market and lead to the | elimination of rental brokers entirely, I don't care what | replaces it. | p_j_w wrote: | >I don't care what replaces it | | What if the replacement is worse? | beisner wrote: | Such a system is not possible. | throwaway19937 wrote: | Things can always get worse. | | Consider what would happen if brokers disappear and your | application is rejected by an AI from a company that most | landlords use. | p_j_w wrote: | I can't imagine it happening either, but I also: | | 1. Don't like tempting fate. | | 2. Am very aware of the limits of my imagination. 15 | years ago, I probably wouldn't have been able to predict | Facebook having the sorts of downsides that are now | glaring. | boringg wrote: | Shouldn't you always care what replaces it? | mensetmanusman wrote: | Uber forced the taxi game to change where no regulations could | due to lobbying. | freewilly1040 wrote: | Brokers provide a service that people in most cities happily do | themselves for free, and take an extortionate cut. Someone is | coming in and doing it better. Why should I be sad? | admax88q wrote: | Stop letting perfect be the enemy of good. | boringg wrote: | Unrelated as I'm not saying anything is perfect or aspiring | to that - I'm just showing the pattern of how the business | operates. | admax88q wrote: | Sure, but it seems that in the short term at least this | company is improving the rental market. Should we really | critize them on hypothetical future behaviour when the | current behaviour is a benefit? | | And as for Uber/Lyft, there's no doubt that they provide a | much improved experience for the consumer. | spankalee wrote: | Oh, Redfin eliminated brokers? | crazygringo wrote: | > _Less human involvement = better world /S_ | | ...why sarcasm? | | The entire premise of technological and economic progress is | outsourcing repetitive mind-numbing tasks (whether farming or | showing apartments) to automation. | | You're just describing regular old beneficial economic progress | -- the reason why we're not all still farmers. | | And if Caretaker becomes a massive success, then competitors | will appear, which is the basic economic force that prevents | prices from rising too far. All of which would be _wonderful_. | pydry wrote: | If they still end up charging 15% for doing the same thing | automated there hasn't been any meaningful economic progress. | There's just concentration of wealth. | | If they can cut that 15% to 1% and this field ends up being | competitive then sure. | | But, they're probably going for a monopoly play here. | crazygringo wrote: | It doesn't matter if they're trying to go for a monopoly | play here. Competitors would arise and there wouldn't be | any inherent monopoly dynamics left. | | So of course the percentage will be cut. That's how | competition works. | TeMPOraL wrote: | It's a two-sided market, it's gonna be winner-takes-all. | pydry wrote: | Have you seen the fees airbnb charges? | rualca wrote: | > It's like the same idea of Uber and Lyft. Less human | involvement = better world /S. | | It's very easy and edgy to disdain the importance and positive | impact of Uber and Lyft, but the truth of the matter is that | the ride share revolution already introduced collosal | improvements in quality of service in entrenched markets such | as the old taxicab services. | | I recall a time where unscrupulous taxicab services | fraudulently inflated prices and made up twist-and-turn paths | to fleece customers, and we're free to act as organized crime. | | With rideshare services, you get routes and estimates generated | a priori and in a deterministic way, and more importantly | through a really auditable service. With rideshare services, a | nasty driver is no longer totally shielded from criticism or | consequences. With rideshare services, quality of service | became something that was important to drivers. | | And we have to than the Ubers ad Lyfts of the world for that. | handmodel wrote: | Uber and Lyft are 100% a win though. | | - It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to an | airport/bar than it was before. It is safer, more predictable | with timing, and more predictable with pricing. | | - Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used | to/or do today. There are also way more job openings in this | than there used to be, with less friction to get involved. | | The world is not a zero sum game. Technology made this a win- | win long-term although there were already some people caught in | the middle with old business models. However, that really cant | be a reason for us not to move on. | gfxgirl wrote: | It is NOT cheaper in SF. 2 miles costs at least $20 and can | be as high as $40. I don't think I've been anywhere in the | world where prices are that high for taxis and there are | plenty of places in the world where taxis are plentiful. | | I'm happy the services exist but they are not cheap, at least | not here. | renewiltord wrote: | I've never had a non-surge Uber/Lyft exceed the equivalent | Flywheel/street-hail in SF. | | I occasionally used to try these services (I have thousands | of rides so this used to be relevant). Lyft/Uber are way | better. | [deleted] | dfsegoat wrote: | > _It is NOT cheaper in SF. 2 miles costs at least $20 and | can be as high as $40_ | | Can confirm. Arrived at SFO late the other night (1130pm- | ish) and Uber wanted $80 to take me from Passenger pickup, | to my longterm parking lot which was probably 3 miles away. | | I ended up taking a Taxi for $12 + tip. | handmodel wrote: | It isn't the case they are more expensive than taxi's where | I am. I take it now that isn't the case everywhere. And | even in in the SF area I don't believe that taxi's would be | cheaper if you lived slightly out of the core areas and had | to call one to drive out to you. | | I am also still extremely skeptical they contribute to | higher prices though. If Uber and Lyft did not exist I | believe (just a theory) that taxi prices would be much | higher. | | Perhaps someone who lives in a city where ubers are banned | could state if taxi prices have grown over the years. | afterburner wrote: | An exercise in offloading car depreciation and maintenance | onto unsuspecting low-paid workers. | cafard wrote: | Will Uber and Lift continue to be a win when the VCs start | wanting to see some of their money back? Or will the prices | start rising back to the old taxi rates, then past? | wallawe wrote: | I'm confused by this comment. They both went public two | years ago so VCs have all cashed out. | deminature wrote: | People don't understand the difference between VC backed | startups and public companies backed by institutional and | retail investors | stale2002 wrote: | I've heard these arguments for years, depending on the | company. How long do things have to go on, for people to | stop believe that prices are going to massively rise? | | I heard the same thing about amazon. That the inevitable | huge price increases are coming. Hasn't happened yet. | sombremesa wrote: | We're talking about public companies. You can safely use | the term investors, the term "VC" is irrelevant, except for | drama. | | Now that we're talking about public companies, there are a | lot of them. Any concern about price gouging you might have | should extend to all these companies. | | If not, why not? | satellite2 wrote: | Not sure if it's accurate, but the feeling is that | recently, tech companies went public before being | profitable or while barely being so. On top of that, | their valuation is higher on a PE ratio basis than | classical ones. | | So it feels that they'll have to change something big to | meet expected returns. | | And the fear is that, as they succesfully managed to kill | the incumbent, they are free to change the most obvious | parameter, the pricing. | dralley wrote: | >- It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to | an airport/bar than it was before. | | Is it? Or are venture capitalists just footing the bill? | | Whatever model of "price" you use needs to take into account | the fact that not only are Uber and Lyft lighting enormous | piles of Saudi money on fire to "gain marketshare" but that | the actual drivers are being paid peanuts. This isn't pure | win, it's more like Nestle handing out free baby formula in | Africa to destroy the "domestic market" so to speak. | handmodel wrote: | What market did they destroy? The money went directly to US | engineers and US drivers. | | The US should be blessed that Saudi is so bad with its | money and so willing to subsidize Americans. | | It destroyed the money of people who had bought up | medallions. That's it. Having medallions was not a long | term solution when the city can now charge rideshare | services for miles/minutes/rides on the road without any | hard cap for politically connected incumbent players. | TheOtherHobbes wrote: | The US may not feel so blessed when the Saudis decide | they want some of that money back. | handmodel wrote: | Huh? Uber is a publicly traded company now. If Saudi | sells its shares of Uber the company valuation will dip | some but otherwise go unchanged. | dralley wrote: | > What market did they destroy? The money went directly | to US engineers and US drivers. | | The financially-sustainable transportation market. | Companies without endless amounts of capital that | actually have to break even or make a profit to keep the | lights on. | | It's not just the medallions, they're literally selling | the service itself at below-cost in many places and have | been for years. | icholy wrote: | I never understood why uber needs 2000+ engineers on staff. | foobiekr wrote: | In order to pretend to be a tech company. | | Same reason they pretended to work on flying taxis and | self-driving cars. The multiple for high tech companies | is greater than the multiple for taxi companies or even | basic Web2.0-style one-trick app companies. | nefitty wrote: | Their client seems to work on almost any Android and | iphone, including a web client, has possibly hundreds of | screens, supports multiple languages, regions, | currencies... | boringg wrote: | Uber and Lyft haven't yet reached profitability. They either | have to raise prices, lower costs or expand cost effectively. | | Their full impact is not yet decided | woodruffw wrote: | Neither of these things is true in NYC: cabs charge a fixed | rate to the area airports (Uber is _at least_ twice that | rate), and hack drivers have historically made reasonable | money. Most of them have lost that stability, as well as (in | some instances) their life savings due to the medallion | crash. | selestify wrote: | Investing in medallions (as investing in anything) is a | risk. | | Cab drivers have lost job stability, but others have | benefitted. | woodruffw wrote: | Sure. But this is a different claim from the OP's. Nobody | is entitled to returns on investments, but the claim that | ridershare apps are either affordable or _good_ for | cabbies is farcical in NYC, at the minimum. | coryrc wrote: | Drivers are often not medallion owner. | speby wrote: | Yes, the medallion crash.... because medallions were a | political "tool" which controlled supply, making them | artificially way more valuable than they otherwise should | have been. | woodruffw wrote: | The medallions were an economic tool, instituted during | the Great Depression, to regulate a spiraling industry. | Whether or not they "should" be valuable is a nonsense | framing: they were introduced to _enforce_ scarcity, | which _makes_ them valuable. Neither of us has to like | them to recognize their outsized value and function in | the welfare of a large number of peoples' lives. | | But to the larger point: medallions made NYC yellowcabs | _more_ expensive than the market demands, and they're | _still_ cheaper than ridesharing. | the_rectifier wrote: | In most countries Uber has been a disaster for drivers, to | the point of outllawing it. | 1024core wrote: | I travel to India frequently. Before Uber (or their local | variant, Ola) came along, getting a taxi was nearly | impossible in middle-tier cities. The only option was an | auto-rickshaw, whose drivers were notorious for gouging. | And they formed a cartel: if you turned down one driver, | the others would see that and refuse to give you a ride. | | Uber was a god-send. You call up the driver, watch him | approach on your phone, step out when he's there. | Regardless of where you were, you could get a ride from | there to wherever you were going. Rides for which auto- | rickshaws used to charge upwards of Rs. 300 (~$4), can now | be had for Rs 150 or less ( < $2 ). | handmodel wrote: | I agree it has probably been a disaster for existing taxi | companies in every city. But only in the same way the | internet has been a disaster for the phone book companies. | Or that Netflix was bad for Blockbuster. | | Just because some countries don't value competition - and | prefer to cater to existing entrenched lobbying groups - is | not compelling evidence to the average American that Uber | is bad. | kodt wrote: | Your first point was true, pre-pandemic. But is no longer | true, at least not universally true. In some areas Uber and | Lyft are now prohibitively expensive. What was once a $15 | trip is now $40-50. You are better off going back to | traditional taxi companies. | | They have also become very unreliable, with no available | drivers in some areas or 40+ minute wait times, and then the | driver cancels. The majority of drivers switched to food | delivery it seems. Pre-pandemic you could get a driver within | 5 minutes no problem in some areas, and now may be waiting | 30+ minutes. | | I took a trip to Asheville and Uber/Lyft service was | virtually non-existent, you had to rely on local cab | companies to get around. | AuryGlenz wrote: | That'll all fix itself pretty quickly once the federal | unemployment benefits stop, other than prices being | somewhat higher due to fuel costs. | ipaddr wrote: | Cab drivers had goals to own a medallion. That medallion | value rose allowing someone to retire. | | What we have is slightly higher pay until your car breaks. No | retirement plan. | | The drivers lose out. | | The customer rides in someone's personal car pays a little | less sometimes but a lot more (demand pricing) when they | really need it. | | Uber/Lift lose money on each ride but will rise prices as | soon as they can once you have fewer choices. | | Zero sum indeed.. | nybble41 wrote: | Basing your retirement plan around the continuing | artificial scarcity of taxi medallions is _not smart_. The | city has no obligation to keep the medallions scarce; their | value can drop to zero overnight due to changing | regulations (or a drop in demand for taxi services, e.g. | because a better public transportation system was | implemented) and they won 't owe you a dime. You'd be far | better off working with Uber instead and putting the money | you saved by not needing to buy a medallion into a | diversified retirement portfolio. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Medallions don't come out of thin air. It's the _cities_ | that provide them. The cities _want_ this, because taxis | are meant to be a component of the city transportation | system. They 're not there to compete with public | transit, they're there to augment it - to service the | needs that a bus or a train can't. A medallion comes with | a requirement to fulfill those needs, as the city sees | fit. | | The relationship between public mass transit, and private | taxis (and private mass transit) was cooperative. The | relationship between city transportation systems and Uber | is hostile. | nybble41 wrote: | The cities don't provide medallions, they mandate them | and limit the supply. The default state without the | city's intervention (i.e. no medallions needed to operate | a taxi) is equivalent to having a superabundance of | medallions. As you say, they do this in order to bring | taxis in line with their plans for city-wide public | transportation. Which is not to say that they wouldn't | discard the medallion system the moment something better | came along to fulfill a similar role. The city has no | particular interest in maintaining the market value of | the medallions; they remain scarce only because the city | prefers to limit the number of taxis on the roads, and as | a concession to the taxi industry so that they will | acquiesce to the city's rules with less of a fight. If | demand for taxis drops below the number the city is | willing to tolerate, for whatever reason, you shouldn't | expect the city to prop up the value of the medallions | just because you're counting on it as your retirement | plan. | kanzenryu2 wrote: | Maybe ask female employees of Uber if they agree with that | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to | an airport /bar than it was before._ | | On average, in certain locations. In others, not so much. And | let's not forget surge pricing. Or people living, or wanting | to get to a place, along low-profit routes. Or people with | disabilities. | | > _more predictable with pricing_ | | Depends. Regular taxis tended to cost a bit more, but had | much lower variance. | | > _Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used | to /or do today._ | | That seems implausible at best. | | > _There are also way more job openings in this than there | used to be_ | | These aren't _jobs_ , though. They're gigs. And highly | unpredictable ones, wrt. your take-home pay. | | > _The world is not a zero sum game. Technology made this a | win-win long-term_ | | Absolutely true. | | The problem isn't _technology_ , it's businesses - | particularly businesses that purposefully play a _negative- | sum game_ , where the losing side is society at large. | Externalizing risk, costs, performing regulatory arbitrage. | Making owners much better off, customers a bit better off, at | the cost of making _everyone else_ slightly worse off. And | much like with greenhouse emissions - a bit here, a bit | there, barely measurable puff, up until it adds up to a | global crisis - these companies are killing civilized | society, one VC-subsidized shiny app at a time. | handmodel wrote: | I would love a carbon tax but if that existed I don't see | how you can blame Uber for making society worse. In | additions to all the economic gains you talk about it has | saved thousands of lives a year due to less drunk driving. | Additionally, it has enabled millions of people in cities | to skip buying a new car/any car which saves tons of | emissions. | | More predictable as in you know the fair before you get in. | I did have to take a taxi in Los Angeles from the airport | earlier this year and the guy wouldn't tell me how much it | would cost. Gave me a ballpark that was $22 less than what | it ended up being. | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _how you can blame Uber for making society worse_ | | There's a long, long, _long_ list of reasons Uber has | screwed over great many people, and continues to. From | regulatory arbitrage, duping drivers into unprofitable | deals, lack of proper insurance, privacy violations, | harassing journalists, harassing employees... This has | been covered non-stop on HN for pretty much a decade now. | I invite you to do some searching, and you 'll quickly | see how Uber is one of the most ethically challenged | companies of the 21st century. | | > _More predictable as in you know the fair before you | get in._ | | Yes. And by higher-variance I meant that you never know | what fare you'll have to either accept, or abandon the | trip. With traditional taxis, the prices are variable, | but it's easier to ballpark them (at least traveling in | the city you know), and they have much tighter range. | handmodel wrote: | As crazy as early Uber was I still have trouble believing | that taxi companies are more deserving or were better to | their employees or less corrupt. There's no evidence. | | I guess if you prefer being able to ballpark a taxi cost | then that's cool! You can still use taxis. But most | people prefer to see the price before they get in. | Certainly the choice existing is better for the consumer | and has helped keep taxi fares lower - even if you choose | not to use an uber. | foobiekr wrote: | early Uber wasn't crazy, it was a blatant and malign | attempt to use cheap capital to monopolize an existing | sector. Uber is and was always about as close to evil as | a company can be without selling opioids or nicotine. | handmodel wrote: | I know me and you are not going to see eye-to-eye but I | have trouble seeing how Ubers are more monopolistic than | taxi companies which wanted a cap on the number of | permitted taxi's per city - when they already had all the | permits/medallions owned themselves. | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _As crazy as early Uber was I still have trouble | believing that taxi companies are more deserving or were | better to their employees or less corrupt. There 's no | evidence._ | | Do you have any evidence, for any taxi network in any | city on the planet, of that taxi network doing anything | even remotely as illegal or antisocial as Uber has been | (and still is) doing? Uber's transgressions are well | documented, there is great many of them, and quite a few | were done _at scale_. | | For the "deserving" part - they were there. Good or bad, | I don't think any business deserves being steamrolled by | an aggressive foreign multinational corporation, with | practically infinite budget to undercut competitors and | keep law enforcement at bay. Local businesses don't get | to break the law without impunity. | | For being better to their employees, I honestly don't | know. But in all the rides with traditional networks I | took over two decades of my life, I don't remember any | driver actually complaining about their job. Ironically, | the drivers of Uber-like[0] services keep complaining all | the time - mostly about constantly changing terms of | contracts, and constantly testing new kinds of customer | acquisition schemes, that tend to take away money from | the drivers. | | > _But most people prefer to see the price before they | get in._ | | I never said I didn't want it either. I like this feature | - and guess what, I had that, way before Uber was a | thing, thanks to a private company that fought for | improvement in transport regulations. That's how I know | sociopathy wasn't necessary to disrupting the taxi | market. | | -- | | [0] - I don't use Uber itself, it's a matter of | principle. | lazyasciiart wrote: | > it has saved thousands of lives a year due to less | drunk driving | | According to Uber? | | > Additionally, it has enabled millions of people in | cities to skip buying a new car/any car which saves tons | of emissions. | | Citation needed. I believe the last analysis I read | showed that most people used Uber etc to replace transit | or walking, which means it adds to emissions. | | I've used taxis in multiple cities that I booked through | an app and got a fare ahead of time. At this point Uber | is "a taxi, but with no guarantee of quality* and no cap | on how many of them are creating traffic" | | *GPS routing does no good when the driver clearly can't | read a map and doesn't know where they are or how to | follow directions. | enumjorge wrote: | Yeah I don't understand the parent comment's gushing take | on Uber/Lyft. I consider them a net positive but they are | hardly a 100% win. In my area prices shot up from what they | were 1-2 years ago, and many drivers barely break even (if | they do) once you take into account maintenance costs on | the car they drive. | handmodel wrote: | Do you think taxi drivers are making more money than uber | drivers considering they: | | - Taxi drivers (outside of NYC) in the US are going to | get less rides per hour than uber drivers | | - Taxi drivers traditionally have to give a larger share | to the taxi company than uber drives give to Uber. If | they are independent then they have identical car | expenses as an uber driver. | | I 100% believe that a lot of Uber drivers barely break | even. I guess I'm fine with that - I bet if you try to do | that 9-5 and can't do your own car maintenance you are | going to be inefficient at it. I had a friend in Los | Angeles who would only work nights, was fine working 2am, | and could do basic tire/oil/car repair. He made 2x what | he had been making as a busboy at a restaurant. I don't | see why this is considered a bad option for people, | especially since he enjoyed the flexibility. | ipaddr wrote: | He wore down his car and had to pay higher insurance. He | ended up making slightly over 9 dollars an hour. Better | than a busboy.. perhaps but at least after bus boying he | will have a car that still works. | handmodel wrote: | I can't claim to know all his finances - but his car was | a 10 year old ford sedan that must have cost less than 9k | when he started. Considering he did Uber for multiple | years and the car is still his vehicle I'm pretty sure it | is mathematically impossible that depreciation could make | it a bad deal - or even close to a bad deal. | danenania wrote: | The alternative to surge pricing before rideshare was | pretty much just not being able to find a taxi, unless you | happened to get extremely lucky. Have you ever tried to | hail a cab in Manhattan right after it starts to rain? | bko wrote: | > On average, in certain locations. In others, not so much. | And let's not forget surge pricing. Or people living, or | wanting to get to a place, along low-profit routes. Or | people with disabilities. | | You can always take a regular cab. Low profit routes were | pretty much impossible to get pre-Uber. I am almost certain | that Uber is more likely to obey disability laws than | "Joe's taxi" with a few cars. | | > Depends. Regular taxis tended to cost a bit more, but had | much lower variance. | | My experience with cabs is calling a dispatcher while in | route and getting a price. I was charged $30 for a two mile | trip to the train station before. No reasoning. Also they | were much less likely to pick up minority passengers, or | people in poorer neighborhoods. Also "credit card machine | was broken" very often. Also you don't know the route the | driver will take. I guess my experience with cabs pre-Uber | was different from yours, but it was incredibly high | variance. | | > That seems implausible at best. | | Many places you had a gatekeeper. You can't just ride a | taxi, and would have to purchase a medallion or sign on to | an existing vendor where there's much less competition. | They would also be much less flexible with hours | subpixel wrote: | > Low profit routes were pretty much impossible to get | pre-Uber. | | In cities, that's absurd - car services existed for | decades serving just this part of the market, and they | let you schedule in advance! | | In the suburbs and exurbs, probably less so, but this is | where everyone has a car as a prerequisite for living in | a house with a multi-car garage. | xeromal wrote: | Something something rose-tinted glasses. | | You could schedule in advance. Now having them actually | show up? That was debatable. lol | idiot900 wrote: | Since they aren't taxis, car services can charge enough | there is no such thing as a low profit route for them. | | In cities, there were were either no taxis around in | certain neighborhoods, or they simply would not come at | all even if you called and asked the taxi company and the | dispatcher told you they had sent a driver. Both of these | I experienced personally. | gentleman11 wrote: | The purpose of the medallions, in theory, is to improve | the chances that the average cab driver can make a living | wage. Can the average Uber driver live a middle class | income from this "gig"? | | > When accounting for the ride-sharing company's | commissions and fees, vehicle expenses and a modest | health insurance package, Uber drivers end up earning | just $9.21 in hourly wages, according to a new study from | the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning nonprofit | think tank based in Washington, D.C. | | https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-uber- | driv... | compsciphd wrote: | the average cabby can't buy a medalion, he therefore has | to pay a fee to someone who owns a car with a medalion to | rent the car for a period of time (+ probably paying the | owner a percentage of his take). As opposed to using his | own car and keeping everything that uber lets him to keep | which might be less than what the medalion owner would | have taken. hence, increase in money into pocket for the | uber/lyft driver. | | with that said, this is all supposition, i just find it a | reasonable argument. | llampx wrote: | The sharecropper / feudal lord model. | gremlinsinc wrote: | The American Dream Model. | goldcd wrote: | I believe they could - and they took out quite | horrifically large loans to do so. | | It maybe made sense though, as your payment was your | license to work, and selling the medalion on was your | retirement plan. Uber screwed this up - but my feelings | are mixed. | bko wrote: | > The purpose of the medallions, in theory, is to improve | the chances that the average cab driver can make a living | wage | | The problem with that is that there is a supply of cab | drivers and demand for cabs that drives the price. If you | put in a medallion system, the price of the medallion | will be bid up such that the cab driver's wage is in line | with the market wage. You can't just wave a magic wand | and set prices without unintended consequences. So what | happened was cab drivers had to take out massive debt to | finance these medallions or work for some middle man that | is essentially a financing arm. And when the price | collapsed, they were stuck with this debt and some even | got bailed out by taxpayers. | | I wish Uber was around when I was younger. I had a car | and a lot of spare time. I would have gladly accepted a | low wage if I had a few hours to kill. No other job | affords that flexibility which is probably why its so | popular. | Dylan16807 wrote: | You can't instantly prevent _all_ unintended | consequences, but making it so you can 't resell a | medallion and you can't subcontract it (or harsh limits | on subcontracting) would fix a lot of those issues. | lazyasciiart wrote: | > I am almost certain that Uber is more likely to obey | disability laws than "Joe's taxi" with a few cars. | | Knowing the lawsuits from people who've been refused | rides from a regular Uber because they have a service | dog, or their wheelchair 'probably won't fit' (I think I | can tell you whether the wheelchair I usually put in the | trunk of a car is likely to fit in your trunk, thank | you), I am not. | | But there are also specific accessible taxis. How do I | call an Uber that will take a powered wheelchair? | bko wrote: | Because people can actually sue Uber and they can get a | lot of money and publicity. You can't sue Joe's taxi. I | mean you could try, but I don't think people aren't suing | because they are follow all applicable laws and | regulations to a tee | Scoundreller wrote: | UberWAV (wheelchair accessible vehicle) is a thing in | "select markets": | https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/uberwav/ | | No idea how it works in practice but it's a thing in | Toronto. | literallycancer wrote: | Taxis, lower variance? Where? Ever had a smelly driver, or | one that smokes in the car? Drives like shit? Dirty seats? | With the micro entrepreneur taxi apps, it basically never | happens. | NikolaNovak wrote: | >>> Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used | to/or do today. | | Hmmm, That must depend on the market as it's not necessarily | the case based on discussions I had with both in Ottawa. | | (note, when Uber first started, that was the perceived story | - almost "free money!" for bored white collar workers with a | car and few hours to spare here and there. I've had people in | $50k, $60k cars drive me around, to "meet new people and have | fun". However, once full-time professionals joined the ranks, | and did math on maintenance and insurance and fuel etc, the | story RAPIDLY changed). | handmodel wrote: | I guess I'm skeptical that taxi driver who takes on less | rides is making more money after the cut they give to their | company. Or, if you were starting an independent taxi | service that you'd make more money taking your own calls | and doing your own maintenance anyway. | | I'm not surprised its gone down - probably a sign that it | _used to be_ very profitable even if not as much so now. I | do know plenty of people that can repair cars themselves | (one of whom has been uber driving foe years) so perhaps it | will only work out for those people. Which seems like a | 100% decent outcome. | phamilton wrote: | Getting a ride _from_ the airport is 100% easier and more | predictable by just hitting the taxi line. Ordering an Uber | in a crowded place is so much less efficent. | vkou wrote: | > - It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to | an airport/bar than it was before. It is safer, more | predictable with timing, and more predictable with pricing. | | This is no longer true. In my town, now that the firehose of | VC subsidies has dried up, Uber costs more than taking a cab, | even _without_ surge pricing. | hourislate wrote: | Have you noticed a trend in this thread where everything is | way more expensive in cities like NYC and SF. I wonder why | that could be? I just used Uber for a 35 minute trip to the | Airport in San Diego and it was $30. Pretty damn cheap and | the driver was amazing. | gentleman11 wrote: | > It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride | | Due to a decade of massive losses. This isn't their real long | term cost. It is a scam to make people think it's cheaper and | run normal taxis out of business | specialist wrote: | Regulations, guns, or both, define markets. | | Technological progress disrupts markets. | | The only thing that changes are the cast of winners and | losers. | | Society sometimes prefers the greater good (fairness) by | reigning in the powerful. | bogomipz wrote: | >"It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to | an airport/bar than it was before. It is safer, more | predictable with timing, and more predictable with pricing." | | No it's no longer cheaper "to get a ride to an airport/bar | than it was before." Especially if one considers "before" | being before the pandemic. This increased price of Uber/Lyft | has actually been quite a common news story of late[1][2][3]. | Incidentally "why is uber so expensive right now 2021" on | Google search has over 15 million results. | | What evidence is there that an Uber is safer than a taxi? | Also how can a model with surge pricing be more predictable | than a taxi which has regulated rates per mile and per | minute? | | >"Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used | to/or do today. There are also way more job openings in this | than there used to be, with less friction to get involved." | | Do you have a citation for Uber drivers making more money | than taxis drivers? What is the true earning per mile for an | Uber/Lyft driver when you factor in auto insurance, | maintenance, repairs and vehicle depreciation? | | The "friction" to becoming a taxi driver is pretty minimal. | One just needs obtain a hack license the requirements of | which are pretty nominal.[4] Especially so if you don't | already own a car. Uber/Lyft seem to be having great | difficulty staffing up right now[5]. I'm not sure that would | be the case if it really was such the great(100% win) | opportunity you make it out to be. | | [1] https://www.nytimes.com/article/uber-lyft-surge.html | | [2] | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/09/uber- | ly... | | [3] https://www.curbed.com/2021/06/uber-lyft-expensive-new- | york-... | | [4] https://nycitycab.com/HackLicense.aspx | | [5] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/7/22371850/uber-lyft- | driver-... | jollybean wrote: | Brokers don't exist in most cities and it works just fine. | | Maybe there is value, but not 10-15%. | | Maybe Caretaker isn't the perfect solution either ... but | brokers definitely are not. | | It's definitely an activity that should be disrupted. | Magodo wrote: | Please, humans are overrated. They lie, they cheat, they | conceal and they are certainly biased. In my city an unmarried | couple or people of certain religions are not allowed to rent | some places | TeMPOraL wrote: | On the other hand, technology is full of bugs and idiotic | assumptions, from which it can't recover - it's also strongly | biased towards the one controlling it. _And_ it can also lie, | cheat and conceal things, and there 's exactly shit you can | do about it. | | The older I get, the more I prefer dealing with flesh-and- | blood people rather than self-service solutions. Life is too | short for dealing with systems that go out of your way to | railroad you into a bad deal. | sudopluto wrote: | as a student in boston where brokers take 1 month rent for | doing exactly *nothing*, i welcome the idea of automating away | these leaches. | | edit: fb marketplace might get the brokers first, most of my | friends found their places via landlords posting there | boringg wrote: | Your comments are the perfect example of the short term | positive news wave they can generate. Thank you for | validating. | nerdponx wrote: | Not all brokers provide value to the renter. In "hot" | markets like New York, a lot of the time they don't. | | They render a lot of value to the landlord, however. Taking | nice photos, dealing with unqualified applicants, showing | the property, etc. | seneca wrote: | > Your comments are the perfect example of the short term | positive news wave they can generate. Thank you for | validating. | | This kind of lazy snark comment degrades this community. | boringg wrote: | How does it degrade? It was exactly what I was saying | happens and someone exactly said the comment. It's 100% | validating. | | In fact it is your lazy finger wagging comment that | degrades this community. | cmeacham98 wrote: | Your comments all presuppose the existing broker solution | is superior and people just haven't found the problems | with Caretaker yet (and some vague and unfounded | speculation about a future price increase). | | Consider that perhaps Caretaker is taking customers from | brokers because they actually provide a better and/or | cheaper service. Maybe the positive comments aren't a | short term buzz but instead good reviews of a good | product. | boringg wrote: | No my comments do not presuppose the broker solution | being better. | | My comments describe the typical playbook for VC funded | companies going into a market place with a well hated | incumbent. | | The cheaper services that Caretaker currently provide are | subsidized by private capital and only will provide a | positive return for that private capital once they have a | dominant position in the market at which point they have | the power dynamic to raise prices. | | My comments look to the longer term future and take a | quick look at whats getting replaced. There is no | supposition that the broker solution is better - more | that the Caretaker solution has a predictable playbook in | which we will see if the long term solution is indeed | better. | | The value that was accrued across broker (As hated as | they may be) provide some jobs, the value in caretaker | accrues across some staff but mostly rolls up to the | investors - providing it is a successful outcome. | kreeben wrote: | Absolute free speech, however, empowers this community. I | say, let each and everyone speak their mind, even the | snark. | jacoblambda wrote: | Oh sure it does but that same free speech lets users call | out speech they find provides little or negative value to | the community. | | It'd be different if said comment was deleted/removed but | users downvoting it for not being conducive to | conversation and calling it out as needless and low value | isn't impeding the free speech by any means. | | Free speech != speech free from criticism. | seneca wrote: | Indeed, I agree. By no means am I advocating the removal | of their ability to post, simply using my own to point | out that perhaps they ought to think a bit more about | their content. | sudopluto wrote: | i don't care if a tech company extracts a fee, as | | 1) the process will likely be much better then texting a | broker: virtual apartment layouts, ability to see profiles | for roommates, no bait and switch of "that unit just got | taken buuuuuuuuuuuttttt i have this crappy one that is | still available just for you!" | | 2) the fee they charge will be less than brokers. no way | would someone handover a month's rent to some company who's | only interaction with you is via chatbot | | ---- edit ---- | | i have nothing against brokers. but if these companies | innovate and force the brokers to actually provide value | again in the internet age, then that's a win for everyone. | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _virtual apartment layouts_ | | I wish to see that. It'll be 10 more years before the | implementation won't be total garbage. | | > _ability to see profiles for roommates_ | | Privacy concerns may prevent that. If not, it's a prime | candidate for a paywall. | | > _no bait and switch of "that unit just got taken | buuuuuuuuuuuttttt i have this crappy one that is still | available just for you!_ | | You're joking, right? | | On-line services literally live by that. They've | perfected it, refined it to the level of art. Only the | best US used car salesmen can get close to pulling | shenanigans the large on-line hotel and vacation booking | services pull. | | > _the fee they charge will be less than brokers._ | | The fee will be whatever they say it will be. The more | centralized the market will get - and this is what | happens when things get handled by tech companies - the | higher the fees are likely to be. | | > _no way would someone handover a month 's rent to some | company who's only interaction with you is via chatbot_ | | People will pay if the service is good enough, for the | same reason they pay brokers today. Many have more money | than free time in their lives; one month's rent isn't | much if it cuts out most of the bullshit that's involved | in finding a place to rent. | nightpool wrote: | I can 100% imagine tech companies doing all of those | things you mention hating brokers for--not having virtual | apartment layouts, not having the ability to choose your | roommates, using dark patterns to try and bait and switch | you into a crappier unit... | | The difference isn't between brokers / tech companies, | it's between a new market entrant (who is trying to | convey a user-friendly atmosphere to attract userss/good | press) vs an ossified market where brokers have no | incentive to cater to renters, despite the fact that | they're ostensibly working for them, since they're chosen | exclusively by landlords. | | Five years later, there's nothing preventing the tech | companies from working in exactly the same way--the | reality is that any company that's chosen exclusively by | the landlord and not accountable to the tenants is going | to face exactly the same set of incentives, since supply- | side shortages dominate the urban housing market. | neilv wrote: | > _the fee they charge will be less than brokers. no way | would someone handover a month 's rent to some company | who's only interaction with you is via chatbot_ | | In Boston, I would've thought there's no way that someone | would pay thousands of dollars of a broker fee for merely | unlocking the door so you can see the place for literally | a few minutes (and who expects you to bring your | checkbook and write a deposit within 5 minutes, because | they've scheduled another person to show up 5 minutes | later)... but that's the setup, and many people have to | play along with that. | | You wouldn't think you'd pay 30% cut off the top to an | app store, for the privilege of being in app search | results, and also to be at the mercy of whatever | backstabbing it might do to you in the future (e.g., when | they decide to compete with your service, or a partner of | theirs does), but that's the setup, and many people have | to play along with that. | mattzito wrote: | Brokers taking money from renters is ridiculous and should be | done away with. Landlords hiring brokers to deal with vetting | and showing an apartment and all those logistics seems pretty | reasonable and up to the landlord if they feel it's worth the | value. | Ekaros wrote: | Depending on cost, broker might not be bad deal. If the | general administrative maters are taken care of, that is | showing the property and having good contract template and | sorting signatures and so on. | duped wrote: | Brokers are always taking away money from renters, in one | way or another. | | In other cities property managers do the same thing, but | they skim off the top of the rent checks and provide more | services. | | But really all the middlemen in housing are awful. | tenpies wrote: | Spoiler: the landlord is just passing that cost to the | tenant. | | It's like in Canada where tenants can hire a broker for | "free" to find a rental. However the broker just collects 1 | month rent from the landlord. Do you think the landlord | just absorbs the cost? No, the quoted rent was just 8.4% | higher when the broker mentioned he was a broker. | ipqk wrote: | Yes, but the landlord can find cheaper brokers, or do it | themselves to save money. There's now an efficient | market. | | When the burden is paid by the renter, there's no | efficient market because renter has no choice in the | broker and the owner doesn't care. | koolba wrote: | Either way the renter is paying the cost and the landlord | is losing a chunk of the spread. | | It's no different than the ridiculous notion that " _the | seller pays broker's commission_ ". It's baked into the | price and the buyer is still paying it, otherwise a home | would cost X% less. | handmodel wrote: | It is interesting. One important difference is if the | broker knows they have to pay the broker they are | probably more likely to due their best to keep a tenant | if they have to deal with it. The landlord also wants to | make as much money while having a marketable rent - so | its not like they don't care if they have to raise rent | to cover expenses. | | I still think having this on a platform where a company | is making a flat $250 fee (or whatever) is extremely | scalable for the company and would benefit both the | landlord and tenants. | renewiltord wrote: | So the market clearing price is $1084 but the landlord | rents it out for $1000? Why is he leaving the other $84 | on the table when dealing with non-broker applicants? | londons_explore wrote: | I think brokers are still in the property game because | landlords typically aren't sufficiently informed to know | that they can avoid paying a broker, or can shop around | for a cheaper one. | | Brokers have done a good job of telling landlords that if | they don't use a broker, or use a cheap one, that they'll | get bad tenants and that'll cost them a lot in the long | term. Good broker = good tenants = worth getting 8.4% | less, because you'll lose more than 8.4% when a bad | tenant burns the place down.... | | I'm unconvinced that the above is true, but it's | certainly the message brokers (fairly successfully) give | landlords. | colinmhayes wrote: | Landlords can't pass costs to tenants. The rental market | is completely supply inelastic. Landlords are already | charging the maximum renters are willing to pay. | majormajor wrote: | Do you mean at this moment in time because of Covid, or | in general? | | Because in general, there have been easy-to-find examples | in the past couple decades of rents going up 5-10% every | year for folks in certain places with aggressive | landlords. Were they willing to pay 5-10% more suddenly | in year n+1, or were they charged less than the maximum | they would've been willing to pay in year n? | colinmhayes wrote: | Demand has been increasing by 5-10% a year in highly | desirable areas. Obviously different people are willing | to pay different amounts, but everyone wants to pay as | little as possible. As more people want to move in the | least wealthy are pushed out and prices increase. After | all, rental price is the highest price landlords can take | in order to rent out all their units. | Trias11 wrote: | Advertising platforms love middlemen beause they feed each | other. | | Both are parasitic entities that cause more harm to end users | than benefits. The problem is that they control the | information flow and supported by governments, hence we | cannot eliminate them completely but can try to keep them at | the bay using technology we can control | thekid314 wrote: | Yeah, as a fellow Boston renter, facebook and craigslist are | the way to go. Still no human required, no fees, good | response rate. | bdowling wrote: | > as a student in boston where brokers take 1 month rent for | doing exactly _nothing_ | | At least in California, the broker's fee is an expense of the | landlord that is not directly passed on to the tenant moving | in. If the cost is passed on, it's hidden in the cost of | rent. | | Also, the landlord can claw back part of the fee if the | tenant moves out before one year. So, it makes more sense as | a landlord expense. | roberttod wrote: | There are some very different dynamics though - for one, the | path to profitability is a little easier and price probably | won't ever need to be near where it is with brokers. Uber never | actually removed the humans, but seems like they already got | there with this. | | Also, not likely to change the landscape in the way Uber did, | the scale is so much smaller and no one is getting fooled into | some gig economy loophole that exploits workers. | | Will probably end up with its own problems, but can't think | it's worse than some brokers having to find another job/get | creative. | 908B64B197 wrote: | > It's like the same idea of Uber and Lyft. Less human | involvement = better world /S. | | It's interesting how everyone conveniently forgot about the | medallion system Uber and Lyft disrupted. | | Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who | rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was | selling and financing (most banks won't touch these | medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a | driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an | extremely volatile asset and not very liquid). | | The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their | industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established | rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber | brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car, | calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since | unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do | rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out | of the game at anytime, and they know exactly how much they are | going to get for the car they have should they sell it. | | And I'm not even touching the usual pain points and often | discriminatory practices of medallion drivers (refusing card | payments, refusing rides to non-white passengers and to non- | white neighborhoods...). | swiley wrote: | Some of this software is pretty terrible. I don't remember what | for but the new CRM software at my apartment required that I fill | some form that I couldn't find so I went down stairs to the | office and the person _working for the land lord_ didn 't know | either. | | We ended up figuring it out together. | closeparen wrote: | The big question in San Francisco is "what does the parking | cost?" Very few complexes disclose this; you _must_ give a human | your name, number, and expected move date before they will say. | It's a scummy, car dealership-like experience. I would love for | stuff like this to be online but the fact is savvy landlords with | very high quality websites withhold it intentionally, in order to | start a human relationship. | throwitaway1235 wrote: | Thank you for putting me out of work! | d33lio wrote: | Realtors are truly the scum of the earth, hustle culture, gate | keeping, maligned incentives for clients, lazy industry in | general. Only second to tech recruiters. | | Please keep up the good work! | joshuaengler wrote: | I really want to see the lockpicking lawyer pick that lock now, | darn... | turtlebits wrote: | Maybe I'm old school, but I like to make sure I meet my tenants | face to face during a showing before renting a property out. I | guess it depends on if your tenants are all shorter term and you | have high turnover. | | I don't feel the paperwork part of it is a huge hassle anymore, | with screening services and document signing all being online | now. | tsywke44 wrote: | This is the classic pet vs cattle problem. It isn't aimed at | the person who is renting their precious second apartment. | | It's for investors with 50+ rentals where every unit is simply | a number in a spreadsheet. | Cyclone_ wrote: | That might make sense if you're in town, I rent out a house of | mine that's far away from where I live most of the year and | this seems like it might be worth a shot in that type of case. | tcbasche wrote: | I've had this urge lately after dealing with idiotic and | incompetent property rental managers to automate their entire | industry away. I'm glad I'm not the only one | throwawayboise wrote: | Had a very similar idea 10 years ago. Just proves that ideas | are easy. Execution is where the value is created. | tobyjsullivan wrote: | This is what I enjoyed most about this article. It's an idea | I've thought about in the past (who hasn't) and their | approach seems so much better than anything I thought up. | lotsofpulp wrote: | How would one automate away the fixing of toilets and | performing routine maintenance? | tcbasche wrote: | I don't think you would (and that would be a terrible idea), | more the 'organising' and booking of those maintenance items. | I can count more than I'd like to the amount of times I've | had double-handling, miscommunication and downright rude | behaviour from rental managers trying to either refute that | you need maintenance, call the wrong person or don't chase | anything up and get things fixed. | | Submit maintenance on an app and then boom someone is | contacted to fix something | lotsofpulp wrote: | My point is automation is not going to fix the problem of | an owner who is trying to squeeze every last cent of profit | by skimping on maintenance, and hiring rude rental | managers, or not paying enough for qualified people to come | fix the problem. | BoysenberryPi wrote: | Is this not already automated? I log into my apartments | tenant portal, file a maintenance request, and tomorrow | there's a dude at my door to fix my stuff. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Yes, my point was that the problem of a penny pinching | owner trying to skimp on maintenance will not be solved by | automating the maintenance request system. | not_exactly__ wrote: | It's also unlikely they will pay for expensive sensors | unless it directly impacts them :) | Topgamer7 wrote: | IoT pressure sensor on toilet. Make agreements with cleaning | and maintenance companies to service your buildings. | vanusa wrote: | Nice (maybe) but the "filled 200 vacant apartments" is | meaningless - it not outright deceptive. | | "Filled N apartments" _compared to what baseline_? That is, what | is the comparative rate of success? And what is the total | transaction cost? What about the inventory that couldn 't be | rented? And what about all the tenants getting dissed by the | algorithm (read: discriminated against, perhaps unlawfully), per | a sibling comment to this one? | | Then again, these are realtors, so we expect them to blow smoke | up our... nevermind. | wly_cdgr wrote: | Wonderful writeup with a great balance of readability and detail. | Thank you for sharing! | | TBH, this would work very well as an introduction to modern tech | product development for a general audience - you could pitch this | to the digital edition of the Atlantic, say, and probably get it | in without much editing. It helps that the domain is so broadly | relatable! | __sy__ wrote: | The illustrations were solid too. | soheil wrote: | The blog mentions they used Charles to intercept traffic and | reverse engineer the digital lock [0]. How does a tool like that | decode HTTPS traffic? I thought HTTPS was encrypted end to end by | the browser. | | [0] https://www.charlesproxy.com/ | readflaggedcomm wrote: | You add its root cert, and it re-encrypts: | https://www.charlesproxy.com/documentation/proxying/ssl-prox... | Trias11 wrote: | Every time middlemen eliminated, new kitten is born! | | And vice versa. | | I applaud any service that makes former happens. | b20000 wrote: | why not build software that finds quality renters and sends them | better deals on apartments similar to what they are renting? | people pay too much rent in tech metros. | nickelcitymario wrote: | Serious Manna vibes: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 | deregulateMed wrote: | On a similar note, real estate agents need to be knocked down a | level. | | Their job is to unlock a door. | | Why they can make a hundred thousand dollars a year is criminal. | sneak wrote: | It's getting to be that you almost can't engage in any everyday | transaction in the US over $1000 that doesn't involve showing an | online-verified ID. | | Someone who wishes to keep their driver's license out of S3 is | getting pretty short on options. | cde-v wrote: | Would love something like this to kill (or at least severely | maim) the broker industry in NYC. 0 value added at the cost of | 10-15% of yearly rent. | aerovistae wrote: | Yeah it's pretty atrocious. They're so useless. It's such a | feel-bad experience working with them, knowing they're not | helping at all, and knowing you have to pay them thousands of | dollars if you want the apartment - for nothing. | solumos wrote: | What's worse is when they try to pretend like you're actually | getting value for the crazy fee they charge. | | "Now, I'm you're broker so if there are any problems | throughout the lease, feel free to contact me. This isn't | just a one time thing!" | | We literally emailed/called him two weeks later and he | ghosted us. | | When we were moving out of our apartment when our lease was | up, he was around showing another unit, introduced himself, | asked us how long we lived there, etc | tut-urut-utut wrote: | The assumption that software can solve this problem is simply | wrong. It's the regulation change that needs to happen if you | don't want that renter pay the broker "services". | | For example, a new law in Germany to apply the "who hires pays" | principle for brokers in the renting market basically made the | renting "broker fee free" for renters. Previously, the | landlords would hire a broker that needed to be paid by the | renter. Why not, it doesn't cost them anything, and at least | they don't need to have a contact with the potential renters. | Now, that they have to pay for the brokers service themselves, | it's suddenly not that valuable to them. | oconnor663 wrote: | > Why not, it doesn't cost them anything | | It can't be quite this simple. If your renter is paying $X to | you plus $Y to your broker, then their willingness to pay for | the apartment was at least $X+Y, and you're leaving at least | $Y on the table. In theory there should be a lot of market | pressure to shrink Y. So the question becomes, what | transaction costs are getting in the way of that? Or maybe, | is the $Y actually buying something that's of value to the | landlord? | pishpash wrote: | That and the entire rental background check industry. $30-$50 | fees for each submission of the same report on what is | effectively your own data. | xadhominemx wrote: | It's necessary in many markets IMO. Otherwise people would | just spam applications at every apartment that satisfies | their broad filters. | maest wrote: | So charge per application, with the money going towards | first month's rent, if successful. | hammock wrote: | That's what a lot of places do | xadhominemx wrote: | That's how it usually works | pishpash wrote: | I've never seen it go towards first month's rent, but | that's not the point. The money isn't going to the | landlord or the tenant, but to the data aggregators. | xadhominemx wrote: | A lot of it is highly manual on the back end, calling and | faxing random state agencies. It's not like it's a 90% | operating margin business or a lot of companies would be | getting in and driving pricing down. | pishpash wrote: | Pretty sure it's infinite% margin when the same report is | sent again for another application fee. | xadhominemx wrote: | If you believe this you should get into the business | pishpash wrote: | Nonsense. Spamming applications is strictly better than | spamming low-information contact requests, and nobody | seems to mind that. Instead you'll get structured | applicant information that can be filtered against. | literallycancer wrote: | So the landlords just make the rent more expensive to account | for having to pay the broker, what changed? | munificent wrote: | It addresses the principle-agent problem[0]. Yes, renters | that want a broker may simply raise the rent to pay for it, | but doing so affects _their own_ bottom line because either | (1) it 's harder to find a renter at that higher price or | (2) they could have found a renter without a broker and | pocketed the higher rent themselves. | | [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_ | proble... | 988747 wrote: | Both of those things happen regardless of who formally | pays the fee: one side of the transaction has a desirable | good (apartment) the other side only has money to bargain | with, so it's obvious from who's pocket the fee will come | from. Many times the buyer would openly raise that | argument in negotiations: "You know, I have all those | fees to pay, can you lower the rent a bit?". It's not | like sellers are completely oblivious to fees paid by a | buyer. | joshuaissac wrote: | When the person choosing the broker is the same one that | pays, it creates competition on fees. The renter cannot | choose to change the agent to a cheaper one. They have to | deal with whatever agent the landlord has chosen. | | It works similarly when software is chosen by people who | have to use it versus those who do not. IDEs and text | editors are usually chosen by the users, so there is | competition on usability between different options. | Timesheet and other HR software are usually chosen by | upper management, and the people actually using them | cannot switch, so there is not the same kind of | competition on usability. Instead, they compete on other | things that make them more appealing to those who can | make the decision. | heurisko wrote: | In the UK we banned letting agent (broker) fees charged | to the prospective tenant for exactly this reason. | | Tenants can't "shop around" for a different letting agent | that won't charge them PS250 for a PS50 credit check. | Landlords can. | munificent wrote: | _> so it 's obvious from who's pocket the fee will come | from._ | | Yes. The problem is that the one whose pocket the money | comes from is not the one who _selects the broker_. Thus | the person with the financial incentive to make that | choice wisely is not the one making the choice. This is | why it 's a principle-agent problem. | 988747 wrote: | My point is that landlords still do realize that "more | money for the broker == less money for me", even if this | money is not coming directly from their pocket. So they | still have incentive to choose a cheap one. | IggleSniggle wrote: | It has a real effect on the advertised price, and | landlords are generally in a better position to reduce | the cost or eliminate it altogether. | udfalkso wrote: | This is a fallacy, at least in NY. I asked my last landlord | about this. I asked "if brokers can't charge renters their | fee will you pay it instead?". He replied immediately, "no | way, I'll just ask my nephew to show the apartments | instead". I had just paid a 12% fee to a broker a year | earlier with this same landlord! Thousands of dollars. The | broker did very little for this exorbitant fee, they opened | a door for a dozen people maybe, and uploaded a few | pictures online. They were simply the gate-keeper and I had | no choice in the matter. | | The only reason landlords deal with them is that it's | easier for them to do so, so why not. It's pervasive | enough, as a quirk of history, that it's tolerated. They | certainly do not provide value that matches up with their | fees in most cases. | | Rents may go up, but it will be only a fraction of the | insane fees retail brokers in NY charge. It needs to | change. | tut-urut-utut wrote: | The rent price depends on supply and demand, not on | landlords costs. | einpoklum wrote: | That's like saying rent prices depend on the will of god. | Retroactively, you can justify this claim regardless of | what happened: "It was god's will" or "You had to adapt | your price to the demand". | bin_bash wrote: | Doesn't it stand to reason that without broker fees the | landlord margins would increase bringing more landlords | (supply) into the market? | dspillett wrote: | It isn't quite as simple as that in many cases. Kickbacks | from brokers and other dubious jiggery-pokery can make | quite a difference. | dspillett wrote: | Less admin for the tenant? More up-front pricing (assuming | the broker fee was not required to be obviously disclosed) | for them too? | an_opabinia wrote: | > So the landlords just make the rent more expensive to | account for having to pay the broker, what changed? | | Nothing. | | Clearly brokers are doing something or else people wouldn't | pay for them. | | My theory is the broker fee has positive selection for | wealthier tenants, which for every property - low or high | rent - makes for an economically better tenant. Raising the | rent has the same effect. We care that there's cheap rent | because shelter is a basic human right, and we appreciate | that spending tons of money on rent couldn't possibly be | good in a positivist economic sense, but of course raising | the rent also selects for a wealthier tenant. | | Replacing the brokers with software has a similar effect. | If your users feel comfortable using a complicated website | with no human beings involved, they are going to be | wealthier. | | This comes up everywhere. For example Oscar selects for a | healthier insurance pool by being a complicated app - old | people want real human beings to talk to and are turned off | by apps, and they are also more expensive for insurance to | carry, so it's a "win" for Oscar. Credit card only | restaurants with lines make higher revenue because lower- | ticket cash paying customers are substituted by higher- | ticket credit card paying ones. And the iPhone is a $800 | phone versus a $300 Android one, no wonder iPhone users | spend 2-5x as much on IAP. | lotsofpulp wrote: | I am also under the impression that one of the purposes | of brokers/agents is to serve as plausible deniability | against accusations of discrimination. | boringg wrote: | It also solves the problem of having to source tenants | and do all the legwork around that which is a pain in the | ass part of owning property. Especially if you own many | properties. | | It's not unlike the role a recruiter plays for jobs. | einpoklum wrote: | > Clearly brokers are doing something or else people | wouldn't pay for them. | | In many cases (not talking about NYC here), what they're | doing is simply blocking access to an apartment. You see | an apartment, you have to deal with the broker / real- | estate agent / makelaar. Or - you don't even see it in | the first place, since it's only available via an agency. | | This is similar to setting up a roadblock and collecting | a transit tax; or the "troll under the bridge" from folk | tales. | | That being said - In some cases and some places brokers | can help apartment seekers filter relevant apartments, | and can help convince both the seeker and the landlord to | compromise, agree to some arrangements to seal the deal. | Another benefit of such type of apartment brokerage is | that a broker with a minimum of reputation would not try | to scam you (rent contract scams are a thing in some | countries); and may be able to exert some pressure if, | say, some serious problem is revealed right after you | move in and the landlord doesn't want to address it. | crazygringo wrote: | > _Clearly brokers are doing something or else people | wouldn 't pay for them._ | | They were, pre-internet. It actually made sense then in | NYC with such complicated and massive amounts of | inventory. | | They don't make sense anymore. The only reason they still | exist is because lazy landlords just want to stick with | the system they've always known, because it feels "free" | to them. In reality they get lower rents, but that's | harder for them to see. And it's a problem of | coordination -- as long as most other properties use | brokers, you _really_ don 't have a reason to change. | | The slow increase of no-fee listings has changed that. | But it's still _slow_ , and a lot of it is new buildings. | It's hard to get landlords who have done things the same | way for 40 years to change. | WalterBright wrote: | > Clearly brokers are doing something or else people | wouldn't pay for them. | | Just like the real estate agent business. Sellers have | the option to sell it themselves, or use an agent. Agents | do better and more organized marketing, handle the | paperwork for the transaction, and offer help in | prepping/staging the house. Etc. | sib wrote: | They're also creating an implicit discount for longer- | term tenants (which is good for landlords). | | When I rented my place in NYC some years ago, the broker | fee was meaningful to me. Once I paid it, I was less | likely to want to move since I'd have to pay it again vs | renewing my existing lease which did not involve another | broker fee. | tjalfi wrote: | > Clearly brokers are doing something or else people | wouldn't pay for them. | | There's a great Joel Spolsky comment[0] that explains why | landlords use brokers. They perform work that would | otherwise be done by the landlord. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961727 | badestrand wrote: | Actually the brokers' prices fell drastically in response | to this law. Probably because the landlords now have an | incentive to take the cheapest broker. | [deleted] | e12e wrote: | > "who hires pays" principle for brokers in the renting | market basically made the renting "broker fee free" for | renters. | | How can that work? Landlord (absent regulation) set the rents | as high as they want/can get away with. What's the difference | between 100/month rent + 50/month broker fee, and 150/month | rent + "zero"/month broker fee? | netrus wrote: | In Germany, the broker fee is a one time payment. That | makes for an complicated calculation, as rentals are | usually not fixed-term, and people will expect to stay for | several years or decades. Is 900 EUR per month + 1,800 Euro | one time payment better or worse than 1,000 Euro per month | without a broker fee? Most people do not think like that. | 900 < 1,000 Euro, end of story. | | Of course, the real problem was that the landlords did not | both to negotiate the brokers fee. There was a maximum | broker fee defined by law, and everyone just charged the | maximum. Not anymore! | titzer wrote: | The Marklers are such parasites. | TheRealPomax wrote: | No, in the case of NYT brokers, software _would_ solve the | problem of NYC brokers, by putting them out of a job. | | If you're from Germany, you have nothing to compare these | people to, they run a racket that would be illegal there to | begin with. They're _nothing_ like the kind of rental | agencies in Germany, they are individuals who basically | figured out how to scalp entire buildings worth of | apartments. | kennywinker wrote: | Op suggested regulation. I.e. making certain practices | illegal. You responded: | | > they run a racket that would be illegal there to begin | with. | | Perhaps making it illegal in nyc as well, as op suggested, | is the solution? Rather than letting a tech company replace | the scalpers with a scalping monopoly | denimnerd42 wrote: | do you think NYC making a law or regulation is going to | lead to less corruption? This is NYC we are talking about | after all. | seigando wrote: | maybe we can find a software solution to the selective | enforcement problem. | | ;) | nwsm wrote: | Similar situation in Boston. The value add is that the brokers | are regulated and in theory this means no one gets scammed. For | context, over the past few years of crazy rental market, many | people have gotten scammed by finding a fake listing online, | sending off a deposit, and never hearing from the "landlord" | again. | analyte123 wrote: | If evictions didn't take 3-6 months minimum in NYC (even pre- | COVID), landlords could afford to be a lot less picky about who | they rent to. Brokers or other middlemen also benefit the | landlord by keeping the landlord at arms length from tenant | selection and therefore possible discrimination lawsuits. | EricE wrote: | Yup. And people wonder why landlords are so picky... | | 10 years ago I would have entertained owning rental | properties. I'm so glad with todays climate I didn't go down | that path! | KoftaBob wrote: | If I'm not mistaken, didn't NYC enact a law last year that bans | landlords from charging tenants the broker fee? | solumos wrote: | It was a state law that capped application fees at $20 or | something, and some authority interpreted that as broker's | could no longer charge fees to tenants, but then the real | estate brokers association was granted a stay + the court | eventually decided in their favor. | infogulch wrote: | It's good that there's no surprise fees, but they're still | being paid. It's like anything, the value is just hidden in | the price of the product now, rent in this case. | justaguy88 wrote: | The landlord can decide if it's worth paying them then | michaelmrose wrote: | If the landlord pays a fee equal to a percentage of the | rent you will be paying them if you rent there. If they | are pervasively popular in your market you wont have much | choice but to pay them as well. | syshum wrote: | That is not how economics work... | | All fees are passed on to the consumer in some way, it is | either a line item or hidden | IggleSniggle wrote: | Not quite; some of this is about moving wealth around, | changing the captured value to favor the buyer instead of | the seller. | | But that's just the "efficient market" part of this. A fee | like this could very well be an inefficient rent-capture | that has managed to make its removal more expensive in the | short-term than the short-term cost of allowing it to | remain. Said less charitably, it's a racket. | | I would have thought that on HN of all places, where so | many folks are attempting "disruption" (ie finding these | unnecessary market inefficiencies and stepping around their | cultural/legal/systemic barriers in order to reap some of | the otherwise captured value), this would be better | understood. | EricE wrote: | lol - one way or another the buyer is paying for it. If | sellers operate at a loss for too long, they won't have | that thing to sell any more :p | | Overhead is overhead. Trying to pretty it up with fancy | language like "moving wealth around" and "changing | captured value" doesn't alter the fundamental economics. | apercu wrote: | True, except in this case NY is one of the few places in | the world that requires such nonsense. | tut-urut-utut wrote: | No, they are not. | | The consumer price depends only on supply and demand. Fees | don't influence none of it, only the cost of the selling | party and thus his profit. | enjo wrote: | This is correct in almost all cases (outside of highly | commoditized goods) and it's crazy how people don't | understand it. It's why the price of McDonalds doesn't | increase when minimum wage does. McDonalds is already | charging as much as they can for a Big Mac (where stores | averages a 40% margin). Increasing minimum wage means | that margin goes down a bit, not that prices increase. If | they _could_ increase prices they already would have. | Karunamon wrote: | McDonalds is a bit of an outlier here; they have | incredibly predictable food costs due to high levels of | standardization and a worldwide inventory network. The | franchisees have a certain amount of leeway on pricing, | some of which is dictated at the corporate level down, | but it's based on bona fide expenses. | | If local regulatory conditions cause your labor cost to | go up, they are absolutely allowed to (and will) raise | prices to compensate. | yunohn wrote: | > This is correct in almost all cases (outside of highly | commoditized goods) and it's crazy how people don't | understand it. | | What are you on about? Of course McD will change prices | relative to input expenditure. You can even see this | across all the countries they serve. If there were to be | a significant impact on margin, they can increase prices. | | All fees are passed onto customers, that's how you | calculate profit margins. | colinmhayes wrote: | You're not really right at all. The percentage of fees | that are passed on is completely dependent on elasticity. | | >All fees are passed onto customers | | is not even close to correct. | yunohn wrote: | Most business only absorb the minimum amount of margin | loss they can, and for very short terms. No business aims | to operate at a loss unless propped up by outside | investments. | | All businesses will increase prices to maintain the | profits they need, up until what the market will bear - | which is why taxes will also not end up pushing it too | far, the gov isn't stupid. | colinmhayes wrote: | Again, it depends on elasticities. Businesses can't just | raise prices and expect demand to remain at old levels. | People quickly substitute goods and services in the face | of price changes. In the case of mcdonalds price | increases cause people to cook or eat food that doesn't | need to be prepared. In the case of rent, supply is | fixed, so landlords are already charging monopoly prices. | There is very close to zero wiggle room for landlords to | raise prices. | yunohn wrote: | > There is very close to zero wiggle room for landlords | to raise prices. | | This is disproved very easily by reality - most places | have increasing rent YoY. Same goes for house prices. | | Because of low supply and large demand, like you say, | landlords can charge monopoly prices. Not sure why you | claim they don't go up? | colinmhayes wrote: | Rental demand in desirable areas keeps going up as wealth | inequality increases and yuppies continue to want to live | in urban areas. | syshum wrote: | Except is does.. and no they do not charge "as much as | they can" for the big mac. Prices go up all the time, | just in the last year the price of the Big Mac has | increased a lot due to input costs, including labor, | going up | | you are simply wrong | EricE wrote: | Fast food prices have increased greater than inflation | for some time: | https://www.delish.com/food/news/a39265/fast-food-menu- | price... | | Thinking that labor costs do not impact product costs is | grossly ignorant. | stale2002 wrote: | So you just reject the field of economics entirely? | | Like, lets say that the government adds a 20$ tax/fee on | fast food, per burger sold. Clearly McDonalds would no | longer be able to sell burgers for 4 dollars. | | Thus price would increase. Or supply of burgers would go | down (thereby only leaving higher priced burgers in the | market). | mushufasa wrote: | 0 value added for the tenant, but brokers typically serve the | landlord. | TillE wrote: | I don't really get where brokers fit in. Most landlords | should have the time/employees to take care of such things | themselves. An absentee landlord would need a whole property | management service to take care of everything, not just one | small part. | | Brokers should be a niche service at best. | rsj_hn wrote: | > Most landlords should have the time/employees to take | care of such things themselves. | | Do they have to have their own fulltime electrician on | staff or are they allowed to contract it out? Why the | insistence that the work be done by their own employees | instead of contractors? | jedberg wrote: | Not really. My parents used a broker for their rental. They | manage the maintenance and rent collection themselves, but | did not have the time or energy to do | marketing/showing/vetting of new tenants. | | And the broker they used basically does all the listings in | the condo complex, so he has a steady flow of interested | and vetted renters as well as standard leases that cover | the specifics of the condo complex, as well as a | relationship with the management office to get the renters | approved quickly and get them keys for amenities and such. | | In our case _we_ pay the broker, but I can see a lot of | value in their services for the landlord. | hash872 wrote: | Do you know how much it would cost to have an actual | employee, just to show the apartments and answer questions? | You're paying them hourly or salary, plus payroll tax, | unemployment, all of the other added expenses that a blue | state throws on top of that. Plus liability, you now have | to comply with every blue state law- oops did you not give | the employee their exact mandated lunch time under | California's very complex, tough to parse lunch rules? Get | ready for a six to seven figure fine. The employee could | always invent a discrimination lawsuit, wrongful | termination, claim they were injured on the job, etc. | | The broker is an independent third party to whom you pay a | fixed fee, and have no extra cost or regulatory liability | beyond that. A no brainer | klodolph wrote: | In NYC, there are often two brokers--one for the landlord, | and one for the tenant. | edoceo wrote: | Software serves both parties with a win. Faster for LL, | cheaper for Tenant. | throwawayboise wrote: | They serve themselves, really. | d33lio wrote: | It's a huge hassle in Boston as well. Pretty boy hustle brokers | deserve easy work that doesn't require real education so I can | pay more to find a domicile - said no one ever... | bredren wrote: | Had to deal with this in Boston back in 2007. Some bro | driving me around. Took this massive fee. Made no sense. | shazzzm wrote: | Lettings fees were banned in Scotland a while back, I think | they're now also illegal in England and Wales too. | jon-wood wrote: | Yup, also banned in England now. It shouldn't have been, but | it was very refreshing when I last renewed my lease not to be | charged several hundred pounds for the privilege of emailing | back a signed copy of the document with the end date changed. | nostromo wrote: | It'd be interesting to see if that fixed the problem or just | replaced one parasite with another. | | Many software companies fix the problem, disrupt rent-seekers | with reduced costs, only to later become rent-seekers that have | the market power to increase costs. | spyspy wrote: | What's worse is they also employ high pressure sales tactics to | get tenants to settle asap. Young professionals and students | moving to the city for the first time are their bread and | butter, along with people who decided to end their current | lease and have 30 short days to find a new spot. | | While searching for my current apartment, I was month-to-month | on my previous NYC lease and was therefore 1) not a complete | noob to the city and 2) could be super picky and I kept getting | the sense brokers had no patience for someone like me. | crazygringo wrote: | Yeah, last year it had briefly seemed that broker's fees had | become illegal, but this year that was "clarified" and now | they're definitively legal again. [1] [2] | | Previously it had seemed like nothing could get rid of them -- | landlords mostly didn't care since it was mostly tenants who | paid them in the end. | | But COVID suddenly made everyone a bit more willing to consider | other options (like virtual tours), and with some rents down | landlords are perhaps a bit more willing to realize that if | there's no broker's fee, tenants can pay a little more. | | I'm actually really excited about this lockbox technology, I | genuinely think it could be the key to "unlocking" competition | again. | | My only concern is that a lot of buildings don't have anything | obvious in the front to lock it to, as well as plenty of | buildings prohibiting tenants from storing keys in lockboxes in | front, both because anyone can take a hammer to one and smash | it to get the building key, and also because they don't trust | it's not someone running an AirBNB. | | [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/nyregion/broker-fees- | real... | | [2] https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/you-will-still-have- | to-... | nacho2sweet wrote: | Making being a landlord easier and more disconnected from people | and your tenants etc for the investor class. What a great product | for society and wealth inequality. Love it!!! Put an algorithm on | judging if someone deserves shelter, we have never seen any | problems with this in past studies!! Maybe one of the most evil | things I seen on here in awhile tbh. | b20000 wrote: | why is this voted down? | not_exactly__ wrote: | Maybe because it presents a false dichotomy where one's | desire to profit from an asset must also accommodate those | unable to afford it? | nacho2sweet wrote: | Commiting a felony seems to be a life sentence in the | United States even after you have served your time. The | algorithm can easily just disqualify them with no nuance. | | The description on this was even funny "When you rent a | place for 1 or 2 years". Just wait till it caretakes rent | collecting, rent raising, and eviction services. | not_exactly__ wrote: | If the algo disqualifies them with no nuance, great, that | means there's probably a market for those who do want to | take the time to understand the actual risk profile of a | tenant. Also, society as a whole does not owe a clean | slate to anyone who has committed a felony. Perhaps we | can codify it into law but that is not the case right now | and the market has decided that we do care. | WaitWaitWha wrote: | I asked the same without the sarcasm, and it got down voted | instantly. | elevaet wrote: | I really hope software will replace realtors. | | In my country at least, the ratio of professionalism, | accountability, value-added to fees/earnings is the lowest of any | occupation I can think of. It would be really low-hanging fruit | for tech to disrupt, but unfortunately the real estate boards | recognize this, and hold the critical data with an iron fist | (from what I understand). | | It would probably take some serious legal battles to pry that | industry open. | IggleSniggle wrote: | I believe both Zillow and Redfin are trying... | ajb wrote: | Glad they didn't go with virtual viewings - scam players here | (UK) do that and just run away with the deposit. | coding123 wrote: | Super rampant here in CA with Craigslist. Scammer will post a | rental ad for a house that is currently for sale in Zillow. You | know it's a scam pretty easily, but not everyone does. If | someone other than Craigslist can get in this market and do a | better job, one that verifies the Lister owns the property, and | there is no funny business about who gets the property, that | would be excellent. | gfxgirl wrote: | I ran into this yesterday. It wasn't entirely clear it was a | scam, well to me, at first. The first clue was "sorry, no in | house viewing, we had son and 2 friends die from COVID, | please understand". Yes, that's a big red flag but sounded | like a legit excuse to me. But, at least it got me | suspicious. Next was in their email they claimed to be | working for somecompany.com but their email address was | soomecompany.com. Finally the location was on redfin as | having been sold only 4 month ago and the rental price was | arguably 20% lower than it should have been. I can't prove it | was a scam but I passed. It was frustrating to me that there | is apparently no public online way to look up the owner of a | property. I suppose there's some reason for that. | ajb wrote: | In the UK, you can look up the owner of a property. You pay | PS4 though. | LatteLazy wrote: | It's amazing to me that 90% of UK estate agents aren't gone in | favour of websites. They've held out much longer than I expected. | tsjq wrote: | Similar to www.nobroker.in (India) ? | nickthemagicman wrote: | Woah as a former landlord, this software is awesome. | baby wrote: | I don't get leases. In Europe I can get out of my apartment any | time. In the US I'm stuck with my place for a year. | EricE wrote: | If you want to get out at any time look for month to month | rentals. You will likely pay more for the flexibility... | baby wrote: | I never had the luxury to limit my research to these places | only. Actually I ran into one of these places once in 5 moves | and it was a coliving space. I'm convinced they don't even | exist or you'd be looking at 1-2 places for an absurd price. | EricE wrote: | Not surprising. The biggest expense for a landlord is | finding reliable tenants. Churn is HIGHLY undesirable, and | thus the market adjusts accordingly. | | I may need something temporary - at this point I'll just | stay in an extended stay hotel vs. trying to find a place | to rent. Anything under a year is, as you note, | problematic. | baby wrote: | Bless airbnb for that, no idea how I would have managed | when I was looking for apartments | gfxgirl wrote: | A lease is also a plus for the renter that the rent will not | change for the duration of the lease. Some places rent month to | month but they may up the rent every month if the market | suggests they can. Of course that could be solved by regulation | I guess if a landlord was only allowed to change the rent | between tenants and or once a year or so. | baby wrote: | Yeah I guess rent control is bad enough in the US that not | having a lease could be worse. | vel0city wrote: | Using a broker to find an apartment to rent is a very alien | thought to me but I guess I've only ever really rented in big | apartment complexes. I would normally just browse the area I | wanted to live in on Google/Bing maps, find a few places that | looked interesting, see floorplans on their websites. Take the | top few of those and spend a Saturday driving to each of those to | check them out. I guess if I was trying to find a place with a | lot of independently owned apartment units you'd need a broker to | find stuff, but really it seems like something that doesn't need | a broker getting paid several hundred dollars for an evening and | a day of inconvenience of shopping around. I mean, you're | probably going to spend that Saturday viewing the apartments | anyways, now you just have someone you're paying to join you. | | Lease contracts in my state are pretty much entirely | standardized. Pretty much every place uses the same lease that | has a bunch of fill in the blanks for amounts, unit numbers, etc. | There's not a lot of additional forms to be filed. When I bought | a house I was happy to have a real estate agent with me as there | were a lot of forms, several different 3rd parties to deal with, | much more risk, and the whole process was a lot longer. Plus you | pretty much need an agent to get in to the more accurate MLS | listings. There would be so many homes still listed as for sale | on sites like Zillow and others that were already sold while the | MLS listings were usually up to date within several hours. | sjs7007 wrote: | Brokers are typically hired by the landlord to find a tenant | and not a tenant to find an apartment. The big apartment | complexes with a company ownership rather than individual | typically hires brokers too, but probably they have enough | apartments to just have in-house ones and pay them themselves. | | But at least in NYC those big apartment complexes are typically | only at the higher end of the spectrum. You'll be using a | website like StreetEasy to find listings online which often | don't have the best pictures, floor plans and you will have to | schedule an appointment with one such broker for a time that | works best for both of you. These days its less common but pre- | pandemic it was not uncommon for a tenant to have to pay 1 | month rent as broker fees. | mshenfield wrote: | Even though this begins with a pitch for empowering tenants, the | customers are the landlords. The value for landlords comes at the | expense of tenants in several ways. | | * It prevents tenants who don't meet income or other requirements | from even looking at the unit. | | * It makes tenants liable for noting damage as soon as they view | a unit to avoid it being attributed to them, a daunting task. | | * And it removes a face to face interaction that forces some | accountability on landlords who don't provide a clean/cared for | unit. | | Notably absent is a mechanism for tenants to provide feedback to | landlords on the listing. The Questions feature is helpful, but | not designed for concerns/praise. | bredren wrote: | > it removes a face to face interaction that forces some | accountability on landlords who don't provide a clean/cared for | unit. | | I do not think face to face interactions with landlords help | when the landlord knows they are providing a poorly kept | property to begin with. | | I've had a landlord that would use various manipulative | techniques to get people to sign leases. | | Promises of future fixes, charm, references to the difficulty | of finding a place, hints toward other interest. | | Landlords can not be trusted to be benevolent. They are like | the pre-Uber taxi drivers. | | Landlords lack accountability and provide services to people in | positions of vulnerability. They take advantage of the | asymmetric power differentials and do it in the name of profit. | | Anything to remove this person and unify terms is advantageous. | | Jerry.ai is doing this with insurance, and various startups | have made attempts to do this with car dealerships. CarWoo back | in the day. | | Bad algorithms can be improved overnight. Greedy, careless | people are here to stay. | TuringNYC wrote: | I lived in a UDR apartment property for the past 3+ yrs. They | first had 2 full-time sales persons on site. That went down to | one, then to zero. Now they lease based on GOOD 3d drawings of | apartments, virtual showings, and easy Docusign based lease | agreements. You can check it out here: | https://www.udr.com/washington-dc-apartments/arlington/cresc... | | No value seems to have been lost in going from humans to | software. Yes, vacancies are up, but that is probably due to the | 15-20% rent increases and general migration away from the city. | I'm sure they are also saving a mint on the two fewer on-site | sales FTEs. Seems like a big win for both the tenant and landlord | (hopefully the savings are being split.) | | EDIT: I dont think virtual showings are a replacement for a | physical walk-thru. However, it is a great way to filter out | obviously mismatching apartments and a way to not waste time | visiting apartments way out of your requirements. For example, if | I just want to see the size of closets (a big deciding factor for | me), i can do that on a floorplan easily. I can easily filter out | apartments w/o walk-in closets. | ajcp wrote: | I lived in DC and NOVA for 8+ years (including at UDRs | Shirlington property) and never felt I needed a broker when | apartment hunting. | | Now that was about 5 years ago, so the market might have | changed. | brendoelfrendo wrote: | Yes, but this highlights a very tenant-unfriendly side effect | of "the algorithm" that I noticed during a recent apartment | hunt: monthly rent estimates vary, sometimes wildly, day to | day. It's really silly to me that selecting a move in date for | next Friday results in a monthly rent $100/month cheaper than a | move in date the following week. I mean, I understand some of | the variables: length of vacancy, estimated market conditions | at the end of the lease, etc, etc, could all contribute to | slightly different market conditions or costs to the landlord | that they want to pass on to the tenant. But it strikes me as | intentionally opaque and hostile to renters. | gfxgirl wrote: | Virtual viewing is not a full solution for me. The plus is it | helps me weed out places I'm sure I'm not interested in but I | still need to see the real place before I rent. | | The virtual version of the place might not represent the actual | place. There's no easy way to check noise levels, lighting, | ambiance, etc. And further, it's far easier to scam people with | virtual showings. I had one yesterday where they sent a | matterport tour link and claimed I couldn't see the place for | real because they had a son and 3 friends die from COVID so | "please understand, no in person showings". After looking into | details it became clear it was a scam. | jdavis703 wrote: | As a tenant I want to personally inspect the unit I'm renting. | A 3D virtual tour won't tell me if there's low water pressure, | a slow hot water heater, a stinky garbage bin outside the | window or creaky floors. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-07-08 23:00 UTC)