[HN Gopher] I need to find an apartment ___________________________________________________________________ I need to find an apartment Author : mattrighetti Score : 245 points Date : 2022-04-09 15:13 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (mattrighetti.com) (TXT) w3m dump (mattrighetti.com) | sl3232323 wrote: | Why don't you just ask someone if they have an apartment? We rely | so much on technology, when we could just ask a friend. Currently | living in Belize for $200 a month, beachfront propety. | mreiner wrote: | Interesting details brought up here about location specifics. At | least in Zurich most ads contain an address. I fed it to google | maps api to get the time by bike to my workplace which gave us | some cheaper options we wouldn't have considered before. We also | ended up taking/getting the one with the worst pictures. Imagine | someone would scrape all platforms for your city of choice and | aggregate those with some value added and maybe automatically | apply with your personal documents to make sure your application | gets in first even when you're busy, what would it be worth to | you? Despite local differences it might still scale. | 4midori wrote: | It's sad that this process is so broken that it takes a skilled | coder to roll their own, just to get good, organized information. | | We were promised jetpacks! | ilovefood wrote: | Ah... this brings back memories. A few years ago I wrote this | article https://funnybretzel.com/datamining-a-flat-in-munich/ | when I was searching a flat in Munich. Some time has passed since | then and meanwhile I've enhanced the process quite a lot, just | like OP I'm currently searching for a place (a house) and I'm | using quite the little bot farm to massively automate things. | I'll post the results if it converges to something useful. | Meanwhile, all the luck to OP and excellent write-up! :) | [deleted] | jean-malo wrote: | In highly competitive markets the good apartments don't even make | it to the websites that aggregate listings before someone takes | them. | | The ones that do are either very expensive or will have 20+ | people showing up the next day (sometimes the same day) for a | visit. It's crazy and while this article is very neat I'm not | sure a bot that scrapes listing in batch is the answer. | foobarian wrote: | A long time ago I knew someone who's parents found them an | excellent apartment at a great price in Boston. Great | neighborhood, 2BR, nicely kept, off-street parking, you name | it. Few years later they had to move since the owner was | selling the place, and went on an apartment search by | themselves (using an agency). Could not find anything anywhere | near nice at that price point, and settled on something a lot | more expensive. | | I decided that their parents must have tipped/bribed the | original agent to get at that listing (since none of these ever | made it to any search site, not that there were many at that | time). | Jeaye wrote: | I did a similar thing to help me land an apartment 5 years ago, | using Clojure: https://blog.jeaye.com/2017/02/28/clojure- | apartments/ | | However, my approach didn't include these map visuals; that's a | great idea and a nice execution! | dayvid wrote: | If I have time, I always prefer to walk around the neighborhood I | want to live in an see if there's signs or hear from people if a | place is available informally. That's where you get the best | deals. | | If you find the seller, you usually get a better deal. If the | seller finds you, ... | asiachick wrote: | I wish all apartment listing included a floor plan. I could | easily reject 90% of apartments without having to go personally | look at it if they's show me a floor plan. It's a little | surprising to me they aren't more common. | | In Japan they're often missing other things like lots of pictures | but at least the number 1 requirement to list an apartment is a | floor plan. | | https://suumo.jp/jj/chintai/ichiran/FR301FC001/?ar=030&bs=04... | | I wish Craigslist would require one or somehow strongly suggest | that the person offering the apartment would get better matches | and have less of their own time wasted if they'd add a floor | plan. | | I also wish they'd add some examples of good and bad pictures. So | many people take pictures with their phone and the field of view | is so small and lighting so bad the pictures are basically | useless. I'm not saying they need pro-equipment but my guess is | there are at least some guidelines that would be helpful. How | about no portrait mode pics as just one example that would likely | lead to more useful images. | johnchristopher wrote: | Why not downloading the html page and scrape that file instead of | using puppeteer (which uses a headless chrome I think) ? | mattrighetti wrote: | I didn't have an easy solution to grab that JSON variable | directly by scraping HTML. So I chose Puppeteer because it | simulates the browser (yes, chrome) and therefore I could just | get the JSON object with a bunch of lines as if I was using the | browser's console. It's slow, but I think it's the most | straightforward way to do it. But if you could elaborate more | on your approach I will definitely try that out! | grose wrote: | I had a similar problem that I solved with goquery and otto. | You can use goquery to traverse the DOM and otto to execute | the script fragment. Then just grab the data from otto's VM. | | Your scraping being slow and using Chrome might be a blessing | in disguise though. If you aren't careful you can get | detected as a bot and banned from the site. | | https://github.com/PuerkitoBio/goquery | https://github.com/robertkrimen/otto | binarymax wrote: | I love blogs like this. Showing the dirty side of data | acquisition with an end result of useable software, that hacks | around provider limitations to give something way better. We'll | done. | Victerius wrote: | Cheap. Spacious. In a desirable zip code. Pick two. | pipeline_peak wrote: | > TL;DR: I hate apartment hunting, I've tried to make it as | interesting as possible by creating a pipeline with different | tools and languages to scrape data..... | | Grow up, learn to take on boring tasks without playing with toys | mihaaly wrote: | "creating a pipeline with different tools and languages to scrape | data from a website with the use of Puppeteer, load data into a | SQLite database using Go and visualizing all the data with Python | and Folium." | | So much sophistication based on at least partly incomplete, | filtered/distorted, and inaccurate data. So much important | aspects that cannot be in an ad or intentionally left out and can | only be extracted by painstaking efforts. Even the initial | filtering out could be unreliable then. | madrox wrote: | I did something similar 10 years ago during my move to SF. I | needed to find an apartment within two weeks, so I built a | crawler to do complex filtering and notify me immediately. | | In my case, the tool was ultimately useless because I discovered | the way SF housing worked for nice apartments was 1) Openings are | posted on Friday 2) Saturday, open house collects applications 3) | Deal is signed on Sunday and post taken down. Anything my crawler | picked up was stuff that was overpriced or in bad condition. For | all my sophistication, the dataset was just the bad stuff. | | Apartment hunting is a great example of needing to know the | underlying behaviors of your dataset before you use it to make | decisions. | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | At least OP had the full address of those apartment on that | website, so he could plot them on the map. | | Here in Austria, most leeches, sorry, realtors, avoid putting the | street in the ad to prevent you from trying to contact the | property directly and bypassing their fees, so apartment hunting | is even more of a headache. | | Still, amazing work from OP. | tecleandor wrote: | Oh, around here (Spain) usually they don't put the address in | the ad so you can't cross check the information with the | national registry and find that the apartment is 20% smaller | than claimed. | est31 wrote: | When I searched for my apartment, I was able to reverse | engineer the home's address sometimes when the general vicinity | was specified, then looking at the pictures, and comparing them | with Google street view. This was a manual process however and | only worked if enough outside views were available. Despite the | time effort, you still spent less time on it per house than | making an appointment for a viewing, getting there, and looking | at it. If Google allows you to download the street views for an | entire city, one might build an ML solution to bring up | candidates at least. | | Similarly, in the city where I studied for university, I | immediately knew where the house was located just from outside | pictures of it in the ad, at least for the districts of the | city I was familiar with. | fennecfoxen wrote: | I use a similar process to look at interesting job listings | sent to me unsolicited by recruiters. You can anonymize the | company but it only takes a few unique phrases to locate the | posting with Google. | dazbradbury wrote: | There are genuine privacy concerns at play here, for example | there may be existing tenants/owners who don't want people | randomly knocking on the door because someone saw an ad online. | Or getting a bunch of junk mail because there is an extra data | point about the property. | | I guess the variety of concerns will vary from country to | country depending on local laws / existing open data though. | bluefirebrand wrote: | I don't think it is reasonable to expect to be able to list | real estate for rent or sale, and also expect privacy with | regards to the address. | giraffe_lady wrote: | Yeah but this is a "the customer isn't the user" situation. | The _tenant_ wants and deserves privacy, and it 's their | privacy that can be compromised by the listing. | | The owner doesn't really have a reason to care, I don't | think, and may even be incentivized in some situations to | reveal information the tenants would rather they not. | fennecfoxen wrote: | What information? "This apartment exists at LOCATION and | will be available for rent at DATE?" And you think the | tenant is entitled to stop the world from knowing that | because the tenant is residing at that location before | DATE? | | Goodness. I should give the First Amendment a hug. | giraffe_lady wrote: | I didn't make any of those claims at all. I just pointed | out that if there is a privacy issue, it's not the | lister's privacy at stake. | bluefirebrand wrote: | I'm still not sure renters really have a reasonable | expectation of privacy when the place they are living in | is listed for rent or sale by someone else. | | In most places renters are only granted 24 hours notice | to have complete strangers come walk through their living | spaces while the space is shown off. They have no real | right to refuse to allow that. | | If people start knocking on their door asking to come | look at the place they are free to refuse, or ignore the | doorbell or anything else. Of course they have a freedom | against being harassed, so if people persist they can get | police involved. That seems like a separate issue to me | from having their address posted online in a rental | listing. | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | _> I'm still not sure renters really have a reasonable | expectation of privacy when the place they are living in | is listed for rent or sale by someone else_ | | In some EU countries they do. The landlord need to ask | permission to have visitors at your place and the tenant | has the right to refuse. | bluefirebrand wrote: | The tenant has the right to refuse to have the home shown | when they are moving out and the landlord is trying to | find new tenants? How about maintenance workers fixing | appliances or something? That seems pretty hard to | believe. | | Are you sure the tenant isn't just allowed to refuse "a | time slot" but also must offer alternatives? | Dma54rhs wrote: | Yes tenants have to approve those visits, hence its good | when both parties have good relationship. Renters tend to | have strong protections in Europe. | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | Outside of necessary repairs or maintenance, you can | legally refuse unwanted visits from the landlord to the | apartment you are paying rent for. | | Story time: A couple of years ago, I was looking to buy | an apartment and saw one spacious apartment centrally | located that was way below market price but had no | pictures in the ad. I called the agent and asked when can | I visit as soon as possible since there's no pictures. | Agent said the old lady currently renting it does not | allow visitors inside, that's why there's no pictures. I | asked how in the world can you buy an apartment without | seeing it? Agent said that's why the owner is selling it | below market price. And the charry on top, if you do buy | it, you'll be forced by law to keep the current tenant | who's paying frozen rent, not adjusted for the past 20 | years, until she either decides to levees voluntarily or | dies. That's why the owner had to sell below market. | denysvitali wrote: | Interesting article: I did something similar but for Zurich | (finding a low-price, but good apartment there is almost | impossible). | | I did follow a different approach though, and reverse engineered | the APIs of the most common rental listing websites here. | | I didn't publish the code (or better said, I didn't make it | public), but it's similar to yours. Instead of SQLite I used a | PostGis database where I stored the apartments with their point | to point public transport distance from my office (pre-covid | search). I did it in Rust. | | Whilst the application is not available to the public (yet), all | of the libraries I've created are now available. | | I should have both a Rust and a Golang version for most / all of | them. | | On a side note, I did a similar project (scraper + visualizer / | search) for finding a job for my girlfriend by scraping LinkedIn, | Xing and a couple of other local job posting websites. | | [0]: https://github.com/denysvitali/sbb-api-rs | | [1]: https://github.com/denysvitali/homegate-rs | | [2]: https://github.com/denysvitali/flatfox-rs | | [3]: https://github.com/denysvitali/go-sbb-api | vageli wrote: | > I didn't publish the code (or better said, I didn't make it | public), but it's similar to yours. Instead of SQLite I used a | PostGis database where I stored the apartments with their point | to point public transport distance from my office (pre-covid | search). I did it in Rust. | | How did you convert an address to long/lat for postgis? | megous wrote: | Some countries publish all addresses with geolocation | information as part of open data initiatives. | denysvitali wrote: | I was lucky, the data also included lat/lng and the address | for most (if not all) the entries. | | If I would have been confronted with such a situation though, | I would have probably used some Geocoding API like Google | Maps's geocoding [0] or OSM's Nominatim [1]. | | [0]: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocodi | ng/o... | | [1]: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim | mattrighetti wrote: | You could use nominatim [0] | | [0]: https://nominatim.org | bogomipz wrote: | Interesting. I am curious how did the ultimately play you for | you? I'd be curious to hear the outcome. Thanks for the links. | pimlottc wrote: | It frustrates me that there are so many "information programs" | like these that are computationally easy to solve but rely on the | free availability of information. Sadly, companies like athome.lu | have no interest in sharing this data and so here we are in 2022, | still having to manually search multiple sites. | | In Internet olden times, we dreamed about automated agents that | would run searches on your behalf, scour the web to compare | prices and hunt down things you were interested in. But user- | centric fantasies like this don't make fortunes, so walled | gardens is what we ended up with. | barnabee wrote: | This is why companies must be forced to make their data | available. The value that could be unleashed is insane. | judge2020 wrote: | athome.lu is specifically selling the 'search all listings' | functionality, though. If they had to make this data | available they wouldn't be interested in making the data in | the first place, since it'd basically be charity work for | whoever else is interested in throwing that data into | elasticsearch and creating a frontend for it whilst | undercutting athome. | golergka wrote: | How would bankrupting these companies would unleash value, | exactly? | Gigachad wrote: | How is mandatory data reporting linked to bankruptcy? The | more information available to the market, the better and | more efficient they run. | abhaynayar wrote: | I'm looking for an apartment in Bangalore right now, and hope to | be done with it soon. | bilekas wrote: | Ciao, I had the same problem moving to Italy, specifically | Bologna.. Super student rich town so apartments are gone fast, I | setup a crawler of the usual sites but one or two had live | updates for locations that would be published through their | site's websocket, after a few hours I had the rasPi subscribed | and could get notifications to me as soon as they were available, | bypassing the need to sit on the website. | | It was a pain after for bureaucracy but that was after landing an | apartment. | spike021 wrote: | About ten years ago I was attending San Jose State University and | really needed to find a 1 bedroom apartment at a decent price | (lol) in the downtown SJ area since I would no longer be living | in the dorms. | | I tried a few different ways of finding an apartment, but in the | end it was one case where the old phrase "it's not what you know, | it's who you know" worked in my favor. | | During my freshman year I had found and been working a job on | campus in one of the department offices (side note: if you're a | student, you're best off trying to find a student assistant | opening in a department office; at least at SJSU, most paid above | minimum wage, were pretty lax and could be used for some study | time, and you have so many opportunities to make connections with | professionals). | | One of my coworkers there had a family and they were living in | one of these small ~8 unit apartment buildings downtown. It was a | privately-owned building, not one of these newer, fancy | conglomerate ones. | | She connected me with the management/owner and long story short, | I got a decently livable place with rent control for about 1/3 of | market rate due to being a lower income student and taking a unit | that wasn't recently refurbished (old carpet, old paint, etc.). | haswell wrote: | I'm in the middle of an apartment search. I was reflecting the | other day on how much searching for an apartment has changed over | the last 10 years. | | Conclusion: it hasn't changed much at all. | | It's still necessary to search on a myriad of sites. Most of the | time, by the time you inquire, a place is gone. Or the ad was | misleading and that "$2000 2BR" is actually "$2000 for the | cheapest Studio we have, but we also have 2BR for $3.5K". | | Finding places that match my criteria still requires careful | inspection of the description. Checking a filter box for | "Parking" excludes places that only mention parking in the | description. | | With all of the modernization and streamlining that has happened | in other parts of our lives, apartment hunting remains | unstructured, messy, frustrating, stressful. | | Aggregators like Padmapper helped for awhile, but these days, it | seems like most listings are posted by scammy middlemen just | trying to make a commission on the listing, and now the site | actively makes the process even harder. | | Is hunting for an apartment doomed to be this messy forever? It | seems like an area that is ripe for disruption or a better | option, but what would it take to actually solve this? | | --- | | With all of that said, this post is exactly what I needed right | now. I've been toying with a very similar idea to improve the | efficiency of my search process and this is good inspiration. | bee_rider wrote: | "We have apartments which are inexpensive, spacious, and in a | nice location" | | "Hooray, sounds great!" | | "Ok, which element of that list would you like?" | thatfrenchguy wrote: | In San Francisco, when I was looking for an apartment,, I | always ended up with an apartment with the worst pictures / | missing things in the description on Craigslist, because they | had less interest / were cheaper. | | The market for rentals is never efficient and will never be! | People who post to Zillow with a perfect description know they | can extract more money for it. | Cerium wrote: | The worse the advertisement the better. I lived in an | absolutely lovely townhouse which had no pictures posted and | a description which failed to mention any of the amenities. | My current house was shown with no staging and blackout | curtains. They only got 3 offers in 2 weeks, in a market | where most listings get t 30 offers in a week. It pays to | look seriously when doing so takes more effort. | ghaff wrote: | I bought my house in the late-ish 90s before the web was | really a big thing and certainly before things like Google | StreetView. I spent a _lot_ of time driving around to see | places where I ended up not even stopping the car once I got | there. | | Today, there would be a lot more information available. | However, as you suggest, I assume all that available | information probably increases the efficiency of connecting a | property with potential buyers/renters so you're less likely | to luck into something that others just haven't found yet. | (The funny thing is that the house I ended up buying turned | out be being sold by someone I knew quite well at work.) | sokoloff wrote: | We almost didn't stop into the house we now live in. It was | #10 of 10 of open houses on a rainy Saturday and we were | just looking to get a sense of things we both liked/didn't | like. This listing had terrible photos and the building had | almost no updates since 1993. We walked in and in 2 minutes | knew we'd want to buy the place, in part because it showed | so poorly and the sellers were motivated to close. Zillow | was a thing, but nowhere near as big a force as it is now. | ghaff wrote: | When I saw the house I eventually bought, I had seen one | property I was interested in but was on the fence about. | When I saw this one I was pretty much sold. Great | property. The house was old and very little had obviously | been done with it for decades. And there were some things | (like on the small side and one bathroom) that would | probably have been showstoppers for a lot of people but | weren't an issue for me. | | Various things cost me a fair bit of money, effort, and | angst that I'm glad I didn't know about at the time. But, | at the end of the day, I got a ridiculously good deal-- | especially by today's standards--for a semi-rural place | only about an hour out of Boston. | [deleted] | distrill wrote: | i don't share this experience at all. i've used zillow and | apartments.com recently (found a place through apartments.com | about a year ago and just found one through zillow a few weeks | ago) and had no issues. the filter options work how you'd | expect, and i wasn't put in touch with any middle men - it was | either the private property owner or the apartment management | company who handled the leasing directly. | Firmwarrior wrote: | I had pretty good luck with Zillow and Craigslist all the | times I've tried | | There were a few outright lying apartment management | companies, but I managed to look at some nice places being | rented out directly by their owners and settled on a good one | brandall10 wrote: | Had an excellent experience finding my last two places from | Zillow - one in SD and one in Denver. Truly wonderfully | luxury 1 beds at below market prices from landlords who had | this as their only secondary property. | | Tried the same thing with NYC and things went nowhere fast. | mosseater wrote: | I used to work at a startup that aggregated apartment listings. | Long gone now, we couldn't compete with Zillow or | Apartments.com. But what we were doing is just aggregating all | of the rental websites we could possibly scrape into one | interface. | | It was hard. There are so many scams out there. If you are not | hand curating listings, you have to rely on somewhat novel | approaches to filter out all the bad data. For example, any | mention of 'Jesus' or 'God' automatically blocked the listing. | Sure there might have been legitamate listings, but anytime I | would go in and check 99% of the time it was a scam. You also | have scams of people listing units they don't own or have any | relation too. They ask for a security deposit up front and just | pocket it, leaving the new tenant to have an awkward | conversation with the real resident. | | Data is often unformatted too. Scraping out bedrooms and | bathrooms can even be a challenge on websites like craigslist | where the listing is just one big paragraph. (Not anymore, | craigslist has come a long way, but that's how it was 10 years | ago). Often times you had to just search for the closest number | around the word "bed" or "bath". Don't even think about getting | features like "driveway" or "laundry" out of them. | | In the end, we ended up utilizing some pretty intense ETL | pipelines to collate historical data, census information, | property assessment data, and other things to try to get a more | accurate picture on our listings. | | But that didn't win out. What won out are the sites like | Apartments.com or Zillow, where legitimate property owners can | post their listings in a formatted searchable way. We could | scrape them and post the same listings on our site, but at that | point we were just pushing our customers to another platform | that honestly worked better than our own. | | We couldn't have the most up to date data, that was determined | by how fast we could go back to scrape a listing. And often | times we were knee deep in a battle to avoid being blocked by | these companies. Often times, after we had exhausted our | proxies, the only thing left to use was Tor. | sjf wrote: | You didn't even mention all the straight scam advertisements | you have to wade through. Next time I move I am going to hire a | PA to handle searching and making viewing appointments. | trinovantes wrote: | Asymmetric information works in favor of the landlord so I | doubt it'll ever get better barring some legislation -- which | we know will also never happen because most voters and | politicians are also landlords | prpl wrote: | > a myriad of sites | | aka it is decentralized | Etheryte wrote: | As someone who just jumped through all the hoops to find a new | apartment, the pain is real. I think the main issue is that the | incentives are misaligned from the perspective of the seeker. | Where I'm currently at (the Netherlands), the market is | dominated by agents. Using an agent makes sense from the | perspective of the apartment owner -- they will take care of | managing the ads, initial screening, arranging viewings etc. | Given how many people contact a single viewing, you definitely | don't want them hitting your personal inbox or phone. | | From the agent's perspective, it's good to drive people to | their company's website rather than one of the big aggregate | ones. Having more people visit it means they're more likely to | do business with that company specifically. Getting people to | visit your company's site is pretty straightforward: they put | up ads there earlier, often so much earlier that by the time | you see an ad on an aggregate site, it's already fully booked | for viewings. | | And that's how we end up with dozens of different company | sites, each crappy in their own way, and in the middle of it | all, people trying to find a home pulling their hair out, | refreshing a bunch of different websites every few hours. | amelius wrote: | The question, though, is: why doesn't this converge to a | single monopolist agency, like in the rest of capitalism? | scythe wrote: | Guess who spends the most money on lobbying? | | https://www.statista.com/statistics/257344/top-lobbying- | spen... | wintermutestwin wrote: | Love the dark pattern on that site's cookie popup. How | annoying! | jokethrowaway wrote: | Because it's a mostly unregulated market. A new competitor | has minimal government regulations to satisfy in order to | start and everyone and their dog can start doing this job | (and believe me, I've met some interesting agents when | looking for the best deals both looking for rent and | renting out my property). The big centralised agencies | don't really have a way to stop smaller agents offering | cheaper services and serving different markets (even if | they're just different neighbourhoods) is hard. | | This is how capitalism works when there is no government | helping monopolies to form in the name of security / | justice / anti-money laundering / insert-politician- | buzzword-of-the-day. | ncmncm wrote: | This does not explain anything. | | The natural end condition of an unregulated market is a | monopoly. That is why we need regulation. | | So, something is operating to provide implicit | regulation. In this case it seems like chaos serves that | role. Monopoly relies on a self-ordering property common | to most market conditions. | TheGigaChad wrote: | bubblethink wrote: | Because the duration is too long (a year) and the cost is | significant for all parties to let a middleman take a huge | cut of this pie. For shorter duration stays, we already | have the consolidation around airbnb. | colinhb wrote: | In my experience in NL makelaars (brokers) serve particular | niches, and I expect they can outcompete larger firms that | don't understand the neighborhood or municipal market as | well, the market segment (roughly price), the kind of | buyer/renter, the kind of seller/leaser, not to mention | just their access to "deal flow" in their networks | unrelated to their expertise. | | Think it's all related apartments and houses not really | being fungible. | | ESIT: Also, more directly to GP's experience, when I was in | the market in NL I found the biggest aggregator to be very | useful, which is apparently different from their | experience: funda.nl | monkeybutton wrote: | >Given how many people contact a single viewing, you | definitely don't want them hitting your personal inbox or | phone. | | This is something I noticed last time I was apartment hunting | in Montreal. You'd see a sign or listing, call, and the | number would be out of service. As if landlords were using | virtual numbers/call forwarding services and just shutting it | off once the unit was rented. | dvtrn wrote: | I might test this one day just to verify it did start with | zillow, but after an interesting set of experiences* | calling phone numbers for rentals on Zillow I started | getting some very odd text messages about bank accounts I | don't own and suspicious activity. | | I don't call phone numbers on listing sites anymore, even | if there's a face and an agency next to it. Better off | looking up the agency, going to their website an calling | that number (which in all three cases of the above, were | different than the one on Zillow). | | --- | | * by "interesting set of experiences" I mean calling the | number on a listing took me to an automated menu and a | robotic voice where I had to enter the street number, and | then first five letters of a street name so it could "look | up" the property I was inquiring about, and connect me to | the right seller. | | Hanging up on that nonsense immediately and calling the | leasing agency's number via their website got me a human | being in two rings, and the leasing agent for the unit I | was interested in after about 45 seconds of hold music. | tromp wrote: | Housing website https://funda.nl is pretty dominant in the | Netherlands. Why would you need to search many agent's | websites when nearly all inventory shows up on funda.nl ? | | I find it much preferable to North American sites like | https://realtor.ca that think that number of baths is more | important than floorspace (which to my utter amazement is | often not even available). | brightball wrote: | That has always shocked me as well. | | Even houses can be difficult in many cases. | vishnugupta wrote: | +1 to https://funda.nl. In fact as a new immigrant I bought | house completely through funda. They have nice tie-ups with | all the regulatory/certificate providers such as | construction report etc., Fantastic experience overall. | | Selling though is a completely different story it's almost | impossible without an agent. And they do provide a valuable | service; like photo session, publishing on funda and | others, taking care of house-viewing etc., | Etheryte wrote: | You're right in that most listings eventually end up on | sites such as Funda, Pararius etc. However, almost all | offers go online on an agent website first, oftentimes | considerably so. Your milage will vary of course, | personally I started using agent sites after calling an ad | that had been up on Pararius for 5 minutes yielded the | response that the viewing list is already full. Turned out | it had already been up on the agent page for a day and | well-priced offers go fast in desirable areas. It is worth | noting that I live in a very contested area, I would hope | life is better in smaller places. | [deleted] | vishnugupta wrote: | > From the agent's perspective, it's good to drive people to | their company's website rather than one of the big aggregate | ones | | This is strange, wasn't my experience at all. Just about | every house I viewed through funda was advertised by agents. | And when I put up my house for sale the first thing the agent | did was to publish on funda. All the agents care about is | selling a house they get a hefty sum (0.3% if I remember | correctly) and are totally fine advertising on funda. | | As a house seeker I dealt with a bunch of agents and the | experience wasn't all that bad to be honest. Mind you all | this was in early 2019; from what I hear late 2020 onwards | the market has gone bananas in the Netherlands and Amsterdam | in particular. | unilynx wrote: | Having just (almost) sold a house in NL, the agent | explained that the ordering currently was: | | - paid searches (even at other agents) | | - unpaid searches at their own agency | | - social media | | - agency website | | - funda | | each step would be on the next day, so if you're only | watching funda, you're already four days behind | timr wrote: | > Is hunting for an apartment doomed to be this messy forever? | It seems like an area that is ripe for disruption or a better | option, but what would it take to actually solve this? | | I hesitate to say it, but there is already a solution to this, | and it has been the one that New York has had for years: you | hire an agent. A good agent will sort through all of that for | you, and streamline the process to the point where you can go | from search to signing in under a week (if not quicker). Of | course, there's the problem of _bad_ agents, but that 's true | of anything. As you note, online services are often bad, as | well. | | In other words, I don't see this as a problem without a | solution; I see it as a problem without a _software automated_ | solution, which is true for a lot of problems in life, | particularly ones that involve huge numbers of messy, | opinionated people with different motivations and interests. | unsupp0rted wrote: | In other countries, not in the USA, I've never once had a | good experience with renting via an agent. | | It seems it's in their job description to try to convince me | to pay more for less. They listen carefully to my | requirements and then take me to places that don't match at | all. | | I guess they figure since I've taken my entire afternoon with | them, and since they've been friendly, I might give up on | what I'm looking for and rent whatever it is they decided to | shill that day. | | Of all the countries I've rented in and had occasion to | interact with agents, ones in Turkey behaved the most like | cartoon caricatures: they use every sitcom used car salesman | trick in the book. It would be funny to watch, except that | they're perpetually wasting their time and mine. | 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: | This doesn't work in all US markets unfortunately, as I | discovered recently when considering that very option you | suggest. In some slower towns a few agents are willing to do | this on the side as a source of income, but then in places | like SF the home buying market is so hot, that it's | comparatively bad ROI for agents to spend any time on most | rentals. I'm curious how NYC manages to pull that off. | nradov wrote: | There are a _lot_ of licensed real estate agents in the SF | Bay Area. Very few of them get the lucrative sales | listings. There are plenty of extra agents with time to | work for renters if they wanted to. But most renters don 't | seem to want that service, and most lessors aren't | accustomed to working with agents. | timr wrote: | A lot of NYC agents also do this to supplement income. Real | estate is feast-or-famine, and especially during the slower | sales markets you can find that agents are highly | incentivized to do a good job. But yeah, you're going to | take a back-seat to the purchase transaction in a hot | market, unless you make it worth their while on a dollar- | per-hour basis. That's the downside of using a "regular" | real estate agent. | | In NYC specifically, there are agencies that make most of | their business from renter-side representation. You can | find the good ones easily on the usual review sites. | bobthepanda wrote: | NYC has a broker's fee to pay for rentals. The typical rate | is somewhere between a month's rent and 15% of annual rent. | It's quite expensive. | timr wrote: | This isn't strictly true. Historically many do, but | increasingly many don't. It's been changing. Whether you | pay for your own representation is also an entirely | separate question. | | As someone else in this thread noted, the landlord often | hires an agent because they don't want to deal with the | tidal wave of crap that comes from dealing with | applicants. That person gets paid, obviously, and the | _landlord_ isn 't the one paying them. That's the rate | you're talking about here. These people are not | incentivized to provide good service to the renter, and | typically don't. They suck. | | Higher-end buildings often have in-house agents (again: | you're paying for this, whether you realize it or not), | and these are called "no fee" buildings. But an | increasing number of places don't have either, and just | provide access to professional renter's agents instead of | listing publicly. Or they _do_ list publicly, and barely | respond to the tidal wave of yahoos, knowing that | motivated renters hire an agent. YMMV. | edmcnulty101 wrote: | What kind of agent? Just a. real estate agent? | klodolph wrote: | An apartment broker. | | Just like when buying a house, an apartment broker works on | behalf of the landlord or the tenant. They charge a fee | which is a percentage of a year's rent. It is negotiable. | timr wrote: | Essentially. In NYC, many real estate agents will represent | the renter for a service fee, just like they represent the | buyer in a purchase transaction. It supplements the income | that comes from the higher-value (but much less regular) | money that they get from sales. | | There are agencies that make most of their business in this | area, and generally have better rate structures (typically | a month or two of rent, flat rate). Others want to charge | you on a percentage basis, which you can negotiate, and | obviously changes the incentive structure. All of these are | "expensive" (relative to free), but worth it depending on | how you value your time. | | Other people are (rightly) noting that there is risk of | getting a scammy real estate agent, but that's true of any | service. You have to look at reviews and trust your gut. | Good real estate agents are motivated to do the right thing | for you, because they see it as a marketing channel into | larger sales in the future. Bad real estate agents are in | it only for the immediate cash. These people behave in such | obviously different ways that they're pretty easy to | discriminate, in practice. | throwawayboise wrote: | If the agent is in any way getting compensated when you | sign a lease, or as a percentage of the rent, or anything | like that, they are not working for you. | | The only way they might be working for you is if you are | paying them an hourly rate or per showing or something | like that. | kortilla wrote: | That solution is bad. You have no idea what you're missing | out on by using an agent. You might think you had a good | agent, but unless you're already really familiar with the | market, you could have missed out on significantly better | matches and you wouldn't even know. | | You know how we know this is a solvable problem? Listings for | places to buy don't have nearly as many problems. | timr wrote: | Like I said, there are bad agents. There are also bad | plumbers. There are bad doctors. There are bad | housekeepers. This is not a problem unique to real estate, | and tools exist to help you find reliable service | professionals. | | > You know how we know this is a solvable problem? Listings | for places to buy don't have nearly as many problems. | | Just as OP said, there are tons of sites out there that | claim to "solve" this, but don't. So no, I don't know that | this is a computer-solvable problem. | kurthr wrote: | In really competitive markets it seems like you either get | lucky, or you basically know someone in the area who can hook | you by word-of-mouth. | | In the ancient "before times" there were also actual rental | agencies where a human would look for an appropriate apartment | for you. I didn't know about them, but a local NorCal person | turned me on and it was the only way to find things. They | followed all of the different local listings daily and knew the | area fairly well (e.g. how parking, transport, different | commutes would be). It was $25/mo and ~$100/yr for them to go | through the listings call the renter, if necessary. They | usually also collected $100 fee, if they hooked you up (though | I'm sure you could work around it) with one of their (usually | several times a week email of 5-10) available recommendations | and usually a $50+ fee for running a "credit check". The reason | it seemed to work was that the renters trusted the rental | agency to only send them real referrals, and the agency knew | all about scammers and fake listings, and daily follow-up. It | only worked due to the relatively small area and and high | volume. Each agent was looking for ~50-100 people during a | month and making several $k/mo themselves, filling them | typically in a few months. | | Like travel agents used to be an actual thing... but now you | either do it yourself on-line, or you're going on some giant | family cruise thing. | anoplus wrote: | > With all of the modernization and streamlining that has | happened in other parts of our lives, apartment hunting remains | unstructured, messy, frustrating, stressful. | | If multiple candidates compete over the same apt, no searching | method in the world will resolve the issue. Either you have | high supply of apts, or a super intelligent city software that | matches people to available apartments based on their | socioeconomic and professional profiles. | neutronicus wrote: | Where I live (Baltimore) a fair amount of the rental market | still works by calling a number on a for rent sign in a window | vmception wrote: | > Aggregators like Padmapper helped for awhile | | Everyone that attempts to address the housing market just winds | up realizing how lucrative it is to not fix it | | Once they get a little data and hire some agents its just a | reversion to the mean | lupire wrote: | How is it lucrative? | | Would a pad mapper intentionally make some listings bad in | order to reduce effective supply? | vmception wrote: | The better or best example is Compass really | hattmall wrote: | Because you can use your position to promote expensive | listings with more profit. A truly functional aggregator | would lower prices by creating efficiencies. It's more | profitable to let the market utilize price discrimination | as long as the favor is to the supply side. If there is an | oversupply then the aggregator would work to raise prices | and would be more profitable. Right now the most profitable | renter favoring model would be an aggregator that charges | renters a fee. The problem is the same people don't rent | frequently enough so customer acquisition costs would | likely be too high. | kebman wrote: | I think it depends on a few factors. The culture where you're | searching. The laws. And the economy. And the available | services. Where I'm from the law works pretty well, and there's | really only one de-facto site that most people use for selling | their pad, though Facebook has tried to take over some of the | competition. I don't think you can get away from the stress of | viewings, but IMHO it sounds like it's a lot more difficult to | search where you're situated. | ransom1538 wrote: | If you are in a hard market (SF) I would highly recommend | stalking. Get a list of buildings you truly like. In SF I had | like 10 I would kill to get into. When your about 1-2 months | from your lease expiring, start stalking hard: call the | managers, talk to people walking into the building, talk to the | mail man - anything. Nice SF places _rarely_ have openings. | "Oh Mrs. Baskin passed away - we have will have a new listing | in about a month". On it, I have my cashiers check, no site | needed, my credit report printed, 4 references in hand, I even | help the apartment manager carry in her groceries - and I don't | mind hearing her stories. There are also a few families that | own 20 or so buildings - once you get on their "good list" - | you are in. | | The places you get are amazing. Clear views of the SF harbor, | tucked away in PacHeights, full parking, cheaper rent etc. | After doing this for 15 years I knew all the managers of those | 10 buildings by name. My friends that "wing it" get sooo | screwed. They go through listings, trying to piece if it is a | nice place, always getting their initial deposit stolen, | application fees swiped, going to open apartments 20 people | deep, dealing with large corporate landlords, on and on. Make | friends! | rootusrootus wrote: | Sounds like you should become an agent. | zoover2020 wrote: | Moien! Great article. | | Something tells me you're joining a big online book store ;-). | | Tell me when you're in town for a beer, would love to hear how | this unfolds. | 01100011 wrote: | Renting is fundamentally broken. | | You submit precious personal info over to a random stranger along | with payment to check your credit. Last time I checked, this fee | is $25-50 USD. You've now given them enough information to steal | your identity. You also may need to do this multiple times if | you're rejected. The person receiving this information rarely has | identity protection measures in place and you receive no | guarantees that they've destroyed this information. | | A much better solution would be to develop an escrow service | which acts as a middleman between renters and landlords. Aspiring | renters could sign up with the escrow and submit their | information once. Their one-time fee would cover a fixed number | of queries by potential landlords. The queries could include such | information as income validation, criminal history, job history, | rental history, etc. But these queries could be approved by the | renter in advance. This sort of query process allows the renter | to control the types of information given out. The queries could | be structured to allow pass/fail results only, so that landlords | do not receive intimate details but only know whether or not a | renter is acceptable based on their criteria. | | Once you have a system like that, you can open it up to all sorts | of validation queries. Think of it as a general personal | information escrow service. | | This idea has been bouncing around in my head for over a decade | now but I'm more of a low-level systems engineer so I never got | around to trying to implement it. Seems like a decent startup | idea though. | turtlebits wrote: | A service similar to what you're proposing called Smartmove | already exists. The renter pays them for the application + | credit/background/etc checks. You don't have to handle payment | or take SSNs. Unfortunately pass/fail doesn't work due to | nuance in income/credit/rental history. | [deleted] | de-asis-kevin wrote: | How many major cities in the world do we have right now where | prices of rent did not go up? | | I'm really curious to know the breakdown of home/building | ownership in the world, and how much the person makes in that | city. Curious how much property is owned by individuals vs | companies. | wildmanx wrote: | Looks to me like procrastination from doing what he _actually_ | needs to do. Which is to click on those links to find an | apartment. Tech won 't solve that. | | Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/974/ | actually_a_dog wrote: | I'd call it more of a variant of the XY problem: | https://xyproblem.info/ | mattrighetti wrote: | I partially agree! But atm I'm using the tool a lot, it's | working well and as expected. Let's say that for the time it | took me to develop it was definitely worth it | wildmanx wrote: | Good for you! Glad you had some fun. | | And you are in the beginning of your career, can just as well | post it to make yourself attractive for future employers. | Better solve an actual problem that you had than to post some | made-up nonsense-projects on Github just because people think | you gotta have "a Github" when applying somewhere. | sofixa wrote: | This reminds me of the small Go utility i wrote to help when i | was in a similar situation. My focus was entirely on checking the | location though, and see how much time it'd take to get to my | various points of interest ( work addresses, places where things | happen, favourite restaurants and bars, etc.). (It was just one | of the things we were looking at with my SO, but it was a | factor). | | It's all Google Maps with arguments so i should probably open | source it, someone might find it useful. | vageli wrote: | This is a great project and reminds me of a small project I put | together when searching for an off-grid property. Price, property | size, and distance to home were key constraints and using | something like follium would have made it much nicer than the | tabular format I used. Thanks for sharing! | aqme28 wrote: | I'm currently searching in Berlin and the market has become | insane. Here's a response I got yesterday: | | "With more than 1200 prospective tenants, it was really difficult | for the landlord to make a decision. | | Unfortunately, we have to inform you that the landlord has | decided on other prospective tenants. | | Thank you for your understanding! " | pacetherace wrote: | 1:1200 is probably worse than most selective universities. | | I know it is not apples to apples comparison but it's the first | thing that came to my mind. | csa wrote: | > 1:1200 is probably worse than most selective universities | | By two orders of magnitude. | | Ivies range from about 1:20 to 1:10 in non-covid times. | ghaff wrote: | It's sort of a meaningless comparison though. A huge amount | of self-selection goes on before an application to an elite | university is even filled out. | csa wrote: | > A huge amount of self-selection goes on before an | application to an elite university is even filled out | | Probably a lot less self-selecting out than you think. | ghaff wrote: | I must say the list is a little bit surprising to me. | https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/lowest- | accepta... | | I guess I would have expected a few top Ivies to have | significantly lower acceptance rates on the grounds that | one could imagine a lot of average-ish students putting | one of those schools down just in case they hit the | lottery. | | But actually, the top Ivies, MIT, West Point, top music | schools, and a couple of schools I've never even heard of | (!) are all in the 5 to 10% admissions range. | csa wrote: | > I guess I would have expected a few top Ivies to have | significantly lower acceptance rates on the grounds that | one could imagine a lot of average-ish students putting | one of those schools down just in case they hit the | lottery. | | There are many, many of these applicants who have roughly | a 0% chance of admission. | | I am not saying that elite schools are easy to get in | (they are not), but someone who is a strong _all-around_ | applicant will most likely get into at least one elite | school. | | Most applicants are challenged by the fact that they only | have one or two strong points (like grades and scores), | and those "strong points" often aren't even that strong. | Athletics, community involvement, leadership, above-and- | beyond academics, etc. go a long way. | sahila wrote: | And a ton more work to file a college application and a | smaller group of applicants. Zillow apartment | applications is just clicking an "I'm interested" button. | pc86 wrote: | It's a lot easier to kick someone out of school if they stop | paying than it is to kick someone out of an apartment. | noahtallen wrote: | Portland, OR solved that problem by making landlords accept the | first offer which matches the stated requirements. Which leads | to some... interesting incentives :p | selestify wrote: | Please do say, what interesting incentives appear? :) | coolspot wrote: | High-frequency apartment trading. If you don't submit your | application in first 50ms after listing is up - you lose. | novocantico wrote: | You gotta get creative. Walking down the street I met this one | guy who's like 70, eccentric, military vet, owns the house, and | rents it out individual rooms for $550/month. He's paid off the | mortgage, just needs to pay taxes, and he's clearly making a | profit since he's retired and constantly has new projects | working on the house. For context that's 1/3 asking price out | here. | throwawayboise wrote: | In the past I've done something like this: pick the | neighborhood you're interested in. Go there and walk or drive | around looking for "For Rent" signs. Look at public bulletin | boards in markets and laundromats. Start making calls. | | That worked in the 1990s. Not sure it's viable today. | jthrowsitaway wrote: | It's great that worked out for you. It'd be great if people | didn't have to get creative to find basic housing. | sl3232323 wrote: | Since when did housing become a right? | zabzonk wrote: | Since the UN was founded, and human rights were stated. | Veen wrote: | To which court are you going to appeal for redress when | those rights are not upheld? The UN declaration of human | rights is nothing but an aspirational fiction. | MikePlacid wrote: | A bit earlier than that, actually: | | _[In 1917] the government spearheaded great changes in | people's lives, starting with housing. The Soviets | nationalized private property and started the so-called | "uplotnenie" (housing compaction), giving rooms to | working-class families in large central apartments that | used to belong to [previous owners]._ Note that renters | were "compacted" too. _This project officially laid the | groundwork for the often bizarre kommunalka housing - a | resilient symbol of the Soviet past._ | https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/331621-lenin-putin-soviet- | rus... | | So you are having problems looking for a 2bd apartment | for a family of 3? What about one room in an apartment | with a bath shared by 4 other families? | OJFord wrote: | 1991: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_housing | NullPrefix wrote: | You mind if I crash on your couch for a while? | OJFord wrote: | Yes I do. But I also pay council tax and my local | authority provides social housing. | jahewson wrote: | 1948 | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_ | Hum... | newsclues wrote: | Since society decided it's better to create housing than | to allow an army of homeless people to burn the world to | the ground. | [deleted] | dimitrios1 wrote: | > It'd be great if people didn't have to get creative to | find basic housing _where they want to live_ | | FTFY. | | There is plenty of basic housing. It just happens not to be | where people are looking most of the time. | aaaaaaaaata wrote: | How is getting lucky walking down the street "creative", | exactly? | novocantico wrote: | Just keep your eyes open is all I mean. Life is strange, | you never know what you're going to find. | throwaway675309 wrote: | That's more of a banal aphorism then a piece of concrete | actionable advice when trying to find a place to live. | Expecting to get a rent below market rate by arbitrarily | walking into somebody on the street is just... | novocantico wrote: | It's true, I omitted a vital piece of the puzzle. Without | it, my comment's advice does really come down to "have | luck". | [deleted] | kreetx wrote: | He perhaps asked every person that walked by? That would be | more creative than looking at the post popular ad site. | LudwigNagasena wrote: | Harassing strangers is not really something I would | encourage no matter how creative it is. | marcosdumay wrote: | "Harassing" doesn't seem like the right word to describe | asking questions to strangers. But he probably just moved | around looking for announcements. | wildmanx wrote: | This is not a representative case though. | | A few years back, I was looking for a rental in a German city | with a similarly hot market. One place I looked at was not very | modern but had quite low rent, so there were 300 applicants and | I didn't even try. Another place was put on the market 3 days | prior, there were 5 people looking at it with me, 3 of them | applied (including me), and I got it. It was more expensive | though (not insane, mind you) and very modern, recently | renovated. | | So, of course there will be crazy places, but if you only shoot | for the ones with top demand, then of course you can come with | anecdotes that sound insane. | TillE wrote: | You pretty much have to buy an apartment in Berlin, that's been | the case for the past 10 years or so. Landlords took them off | the market and put them up for sale. | | You might still be able to find something decent for around | 100k euro, I'm not sure. | b20000 wrote: | why did landlords take their units off the market in berlin? | because renting out is no longer interesting? | theplumber wrote: | Perhaps due the regulation of the renting business. | TillE wrote: | Dunno, it doesn't really make sense to me. Sale prices were | around 20 years' of rent, so it seems like a great asset to | hold. I assume they just wanted to cash out on rising | prices. | OJFord wrote: | > Sale prices were around 20 years' of rent | | That's the same thing as 5% yield right? (Just that | that's the way around I usually hear it, might be a | regional thing.) | | That sounds like perhaps the high end of normal range, | but not extraordinary? | wildmanx wrote: | Because a law called "Mietpreisbremse" makes it entirely | unattractive to rent out. That's a strict regulation on how | much rent you are allowed to take. And that's just the | direct financial aspect. Once a tenant lives in your place, | it's _really_ hard to get rid of them. Even if they act | like total scumbags, trash the place, disturb the | neighbors, pay their rent late. | | No reasonable investor finds it attractive to build new | rentals in German cities. Result is a shortage. And because | of the shortage, rents skyrocket. And because of that, you | have "Mietpreisbremse". And because of that, there is even | less rentals and even more shortage. | | If only anybody would understand that you can't fight the | market like that. | blub wrote: | AFAIK it's not that hard if you find a relative to move | into that apartment. But finding that relative may be | hard... | mschuster91 wrote: | Your post is bordering on propaganda. | | First of all: the problem at the core is that Berlin is | pretty much built out, there is not much space any more | to expand to. Yes, skyscrapers could be a solution, but | everyone seriously thinking about this gets invited to | look at Frankfurt am Main and then forget about the idea | because that city is simply hideous. Skyscrapers are very | unwelcome in Germany because of that example, not to | mention they need some seriously solid ground to make a | proper foundation... and Berlin doesn't have that. | | Second: that law was enacted because people were _fed up_ | with rents going up all the time - including absolutely | ridiculous practices like "kalte Entmietung" (aka having | construction crews in allll the time to drive out | tenants) or charging ridiculous prices and raising rents | while the property devolves ever more because the profits | from the raised rents are clearly being siphoned off | instead of being used to keep up maintenance. | | Third: People were _especially_ pissed off about the | large landlords (Vonovia etc.) which bought their stock | at fire-sale prices (literally - the 90s CDU government | under Diepgen had left a veritable banking scandal and | the Senate was forced to sell everything it had in the | early 2000s for cheap) and now raised rent like there was | no tomorrow. It was _naked and utter greed_ that turned | the public opinion so bad. | | > Once a tenant lives in your place, it's really hard to | get rid of them. Even if they act like total scumbags, | trash the place, disturb the neighbors, pay their rent | late. | | Paying rent persistently late is grounds for termination, | it's easy to grab an eviction order at a court. | Disturbing neighbors... well let's keep it at "having | illegal hotels aka AirBnBs as neighbors is way worse". | | > No reasonable investor finds it attractive to build new | rentals in German cities. Result is a shortage. | | People build like mad _wherever they still can_ and that | is the problem. Land values in urban areas exploded - | Munich for example had land values double in _four years_ | [1] - and the result is that because the land is so | expensive, the resulting rental price are going to be | exorbitantly expensive as well. | | In the end the solution is not the market, as the market | will over time _only_ serve to evict the weakest of | society - and as a result, as we have seen in Berlin and | with the Yellow Vests in France, this has the potential | to erode trust in democracy itself. | | The solution is to revitalize the rural areas. Public | transit and high-speed Internet access are the key points | where the suburban and rural areas across the West have | the worst issues - fix that and people will actively move | towards these areas instead of all being forced to | compete for urban quarters! | | [1] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen- | grundstueckspr... | nemo44x wrote: | The prices mainly went up so fast because interest rates | in Germany went to 0 and below. Get the central bank rate | up to 3% and you'll see property values crash. | | But yes I agree, make living outside cities worthwhile | and attractive. | gmueckl wrote: | Evicting tenants is not easy. Even with an order, you | can't simply dump tenants out on the street if they have | no other home to go to. And there are ways to claim | extenuating circumstances. We've had our share of tenants | that trashed their places badly while not paying. And we | didn't get a single cent of what they owed us for rent or | damages. This wasn't in Berlin, but I don't even know how | much money we lost. Renting out apartments is a risky | proposition in this country. | wildmanx wrote: | > Your post is bordering on propaganda. | | Please don't. That's not how a civilized debate works. | | > First of all: the problem at the core is that Berlin is | pretty much built out | | Sorry, when comparing to other cities world-wide, that's | hard to buy. Places like San Francisco, ok, maybe. Ocean | in 3 of 4 directions. Vancouver, ok, maybe. Mountains on | 2 sides, ocean on one side, border to US on one side. But | Berlin? It's all flat, fields and tree plantations | ("forest") all around. Even just adding a floor or two | here and there would be fine. There are many areas that | could get quite some more density with 5-6 floor houses. | But then NIMBY hits. Easier to be angry at the "rich | landlords". | | > Second: that law was enacted because people were fed up | with rents going up all the time | | I'm trying to tell you that that's not solving the | problem. High rents are just a symptom. The root cause is | a mismatch of supply and demand. It's as if you are | trying to legislate away gravity. That won't work in the | long run. Either you need to increase supply or decrease | demand. I can see that you argue that rural areas should | be strengthened, but I fail to see how that would | suffice. People want to live in Berlin. | | > Third: People were especially pissed off about the | large landlords (Vonovia etc.) which bought their stock | at fire-sale prices | | The people should be pissed off at the politicians that | sold them the stock. It was rational to buy it. Selling | out was not. And that wasn't just CDU. Even the SPD+Linke | senate did similar things later on. Yet, everybody gets | reelected all the time. (Not defending CDU here, they are | just as guilty.) | JumpCrisscross wrote: | Berlin politics also seriously discuss seizing landlords' | properties [1]. It's stupid. It's illegal. But it makes | the potential downside of renting out a home the value of | the property. (Or the cost of defending against an | illegal law.) | | [1] https://www.npr.org/2021/12/03/1061333538/berlin- | voted-for-t... | ascar wrote: | > Berlin politics | | Berlin citizens. It's a public referendum. | | > seizing landlords' properties | | with 3000 or more units. | | > defending against an illegal law | | It's not a law and it will very likely never be one as | it's pretty much against the constitution. | s17n wrote: | Land value tax solves this | nemo44x wrote: | Higher interest rates solve it. Or a LVT that's tied to | interest rates - as rates go up, tax goes down etc. | | The problem with property taxes of course are the people | paying them are also the people living there. So good | luck running on that platform heh. | pph wrote: | As I am also looking for a flat in Berlin I can only say: At | least you got a response. It's nearly impossible to find | anything below 20EUR/m2 cold rent and some people are trying to | (illegally) sell on old, cheap contracts for 6000EUR and more. | bogomipz wrote: | Can I ask what is cold rent here, does that does not include | utilities or similar? Also how does the second illegal thing | work, is that subletting basically? | gmueckl wrote: | Can't answer the second question. As for the first one: in | Germany, you pay rent plus an advance for certain utilities | (heating, cold and hot water, trash collection, general | maintenance of common areas etc.). The rent without the | advance is commonly called "cold" rent (Kaltmiete). The | advance is variable based on actual usage. So the common | way to compare rents is by excluding that. | sonicggg wrote: | The pandemic allowed remote work to flourish. Why are people | still crowding the cities? And of all the places, specially | Berlin. Not even that great of a city. A lot of my friends fled | the city. | closeparen wrote: | Any place I can't walk on well-traveled sidewalks to a coffee | shop, restaurant, grocery store, etc. is a place not fit for | human habitation. | jfk13 wrote: | I wonder how humans survived for the first, oh, 99% or so | of the time we've been on earth? | megous wrote: | Barely. The humans certainly would not survive in the | current numbers/concentrations, without all the | civilization around them. | tayo42 wrote: | We've been driving to costco since neanderthals walked | the earth | closeparen wrote: | Prior to the automobile era, we were all pedestrians. A | small town was a town you could walk the length of. | Europe is dotted with old villages denser than | contemporary North American cities. | ghaff wrote: | While true, I suspect most of the people who are looking | for walkability want something more than a small town | with a pub, a small market, and maybe a couple other | stores/cafes/etc. I've stayed in many of those small | towns and they can be very pleasant--but there's not a | whole lot within easy walking distance. | asoneth wrote: | My partner and I were looking for a walkable urban | neighborhood but ultimately ended up in a small town with | a pub, market, cafe, store... and a train to the big | city. | | Couldn't be happier, but I wouldn't recommend it to | someone who is single. | vanilla_nut wrote: | Likewise, chose a cute little New England town when I | realized that the benefits of living in a city are | mostly... drunks, drugs, and concerts that are neat, but | I'm unlikely to attend. | | There's culture and museums and lots of different food in | cities, but all I really need is a small smattering of | decent establishments in exactly the vein you just | mentioned. And of course a good environment for working | from home. | ghaff wrote: | Depending upon circumstances, there's certainly something | to be said for spending money/effort to go into a city | now and then rather than spending an ongoing premium for | living there day to day which may even have certain | negatives. | not2b wrote: | For all that time, people had to walk to wherever they | needed to get to, so yes, they had to pick places where | what they needed was close by. | goodpoint wrote: | For sure, not by living in car-centric cities. | | We survived in little pedestrian-only villages. That | thing that now is considered luxury or even a tourist | destination. | bsder wrote: | > The pandemic allowed remote work to flourish. Why are | people still crowding the cities? | | Because the top employers by number of people are all about | schlepping shit from A (where population isn't) to B (where | population is), and that can't be done remotely. Then you | have the manufacturers, and that can't be done remotely | either. | | Most jobs cannot be done solely using a computer keyboard. | newsclues wrote: | Cities offer more than just jobs. | | Culture is also concentrated. | b20000 wrote: | because there is nothing to do if you live in the middle of | nowhere except maybe watching TV and screwing around with | your computer? gets boring fast. | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | _> The pandemic allowed remote work to flourish._ | | Because in most of Europe (Austria for me) it didn't flourish | and not every job can be done remotely as not everything IT | related is web development and in many companies management | did not give ownership and resources to maintain remote work | IT infrastructure to anyone, so everything is chaotic and | crumbling to bits now that things are opening up and most | people are back in the offices. | | Few companies here are keeping 100% remote once the vaccine | mandate came through and things started opening up this | spring, and now the new standard is various hybrid work | variants where you get 1-3 days per week remote and the rest | in the office, or one week remote, one in the office, without | any logic or arguments behind these choices, just "because | management said so" and "this is how we do it here". | | _> Why are people still crowding the cities?_ | | Because that's where the amenities and the networking | opportunities still are. Universities, clubs, bars, music | halls, swimming pools, great restaurants, bouldering halls | and gyms, music and jazz bars and basically anything to do | with art. | | Oh, and most importantly, dating. It's way more difficult to | meet someone when you live alone in the sticks VS being | surrounded by people your own age sharing similar interests. | b20000 wrote: | why did your friends leave berlin? | ClumsyPilot wrote: | Population of Berlin has hardly changed in the past 30 years, | it grows at an annual a rate of like 0.2%. How is this madness | possible? | | Edit: There were 3.5 million residents in 1993. It is projected | to reach 3.6 million residents in 2029 [1] | | It's got to be something to do with financial markets and | foreign investment | | 1 - https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/204296/berlin/population | extesy wrote: | The simple answer is rent control: https://www.bloomberg.com/ | opinion/articles/2021-03-02/berlin... | 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: | Rent control needs means testing. It suppresses mobility | when the googler making $300k doesn't move to a place | they'd rather have because their current unit is so far | below market rate, which hurts the minimum wage worker who | could have lived there. | dan-robertson wrote: | Are there many googlers making $300k in Berlin? | ng55QPSK wrote: | The same old lie over and over again. Rent control is | limiting the profit you can make with renting out. It | doesn't stop profit in the first place. | | And btw: new built appartments have almost free price | setting. | jankor wrote: | The regulation gives absolutely insane incentives. In my | case (old contract in hip mitte area), it was easier to | keep it and for my gf to rent another apartment on the | outskirt where her work is as she can deduct the full | rent from tax. Effective price for renting two apartments | is lower than one in between the center and suburb. | ascar wrote: | I don't see how that has anything to do with the rent | control regulation? What would your expectation be | without that regulation? | | Doppelte Haushaltsfuhrung is a tax relief for people | needing a 2nd place close to work. Also the work of your | gf needs to be at least 1 hour away from the main | apartment [1], she has to pay at least 10% of the cost of | the main apartment to be allowed to deduct it (and maybe | more requirements that I'm forgetting right now). She | also has to pay 15% additional Zweitwohnungssteuer on the | rent of the 2nd apartment. | | [1] | https://www.haufe.de/personal/entgelt/verwaltungsregeln- | zur-... | lupire wrote: | That's the problem -- rent controls usualy apply to only | a bizarre arbitrary fraction of units, distorting the | market instead of controlling it. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | I have friends who used to let their Berlin flat. They | stopped doing it after the apartment-seizure law passed | [1]. Better to lose the income than lose the property (or | be caught fighting an illegal law). | | [1] https://www.npr.org/2021/12/03/1061333538/berlin- | voted-for-t... | ascar wrote: | What you're referencing is not a law it's a referendum | that most likely will never be adopted as it's illegal. | On top of that, how does that referendum affect your | friends unless they run a giant business with thousands | of apartments (to be exact 3000 or more)? And at that | scale it's certainly cheaper to fight in court. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _is not a law it 's a referendum that most likely will | never be adopted as it's illegal_ | | It reflects a political environment that makes renting | risky. And illegal laws can still cause hardship while | they're being stayed and struck down. The corporate | landlords can afford to fight. Single-home landlords | cannot. This time the referendum constrained itself to | corporate landlords; next time it may not. | [deleted] | ascar wrote: | Would be so much better if you post a reference that's | actually accessible without an account or even | subscription. | extesy wrote: | Sorry, I had no idea that there is a paywall. I use the | extension[1] that removes majority of paywalls. | | [1] https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls- | chrome-clean | Bud wrote: | Even better to post a reference on a basic economic issue | that is not coming from basically the most biased | perspective possible. | ng55QPSK wrote: | Berlin's population has grown 10% in 10 years. The 20 years | before that it was stagnating or some years even shrinking. | pc86 wrote: | The points stand though because 10% over a decade should | not be enough to shock a residential housing market. | ng55QPSK wrote: | The market of affordable apartments is shocked. In the | luxury segment you'll find easily. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | Where are you getting this data? It was 3.48 million in | 2012 and it is of 3.57 million today, from what I can see | | https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/204296/berlin/population | rr808 wrote: | Its a bit tough to talk about nothing changing in 30 years | and not talking about unification, which makes it a | completely different market. After the war East and West | overbuilt Berlin to make it a showcase where economically it | didn't attract a lot of people. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Number of households would be the relevant measure here, not | population. | | Population can stay the same, but number of single people | wanting to live alone means less people per dwelling, which | means more demand. | alkonaut wrote: | Even if the population doesn't change, if more purchase power | moves in (e.g. struggling artists move out, software | developers move in) the market will go up. | | Also, Berlin was an odd place compared to other cities in | Europe, when it comes to housing. Looking from the outside it | seems like it was due for an upwards correction after 3 | decades of pretty low rents since the fall of The Wall. | dghughes wrote: | And don't Germans traditionally prefer renting over owning? Or | so I've heard (but I'm not German). | baobabKoodaa wrote: | This sounds like rent caps. | TillE wrote: | Rents have absolutely skyrocketed over the past 15 years or | so (3-4x), despite mild controls, so no not really. | ghaff wrote: | My initial reaction was that it sounds as if they're not | charging nearly enough. You may want to be picky but that's | ridiculous. But you may be right. | aqme28 wrote: | That's part of it. The place was far below market. | wildmanx wrote: | These 1:1200 are exceptional anecdotes that happen if you | have some idealistic landlord that doesn't max out the | allowed rent but rents it out at some price point that they | consider reasonable, which is perhaps the rent from 20 | years ago. Of course they get flooded with applications. | | If they'd max out, they'd still get multiple applications, | but maybe 10-30 of those, half of them from people with bad | credit rating. | | Still bad, but not as extreme as it sounds like. | svnee wrote: | I shared your link with some colleagues working at atHome and | their CEO replied that your approach was interesting. | | Once you are in Luxembourg, feel free to reach out, I'll buy you | a beer to console you for the expensive apartment prices ;) | | Always interested in what people are up to (both as an | entrepreneur as well as a politican) | lucb1e wrote: | Actual title: Scraping apartment offers to show them on a map | | (since the current title just conveys some general topic of | apartment need, with no indication if it's about "my partner died | and it's interesting to notice how large a whole house is" or | something) | baby wrote: | I find the flow in the US the simplest: | | 1. go to craigslist | | 2. play with the filter | | 3. add keywords in the search bar like "rent control" and | "-studio" | | 4. go to the maps page | | 5. bookmark the page | | 6. check every day | | In the US/France, there's too much fragmentation and real estate | agents | | In China I would go to the lady selling phone cards in the street | and managed to visit a lot of apartments like that. | asdff wrote: | If you log in with craigslist you can save the search instead | of having to bookmark and manually recheck. | dangus wrote: | I appreciate the talent and ingenuity behind this apartment | hunting project. | | I just wonder if OP ever thought of contacting a broker? I would | have done that before I wrote a single line of code. | | Scraping all this data is really great, but a human broker is | going to know the local area and the other _human_ nuances of | apartment searching in the local area. | | Plus, brokers already have access to their own software that's | different than what's on the public Internet, along with human | connections. Why reinvent the wheel? | | My last apartment came up as an option before it even hit any | sort of public property advertisement platform, and that was | thanks to our broker working directly with the landlord. | mattrighetti wrote: | I didn't actually, I'm trying to save as much money as possible | at the moment and while a broker would be a good solution it | would be a bit pricey for me. Maybe when I'm older and willing | to spend money on relocating that would be a better solution | for sure! | dangus wrote: | A lot of brokers work on commission that they get from the | landlord. At least where I live, you don't really pay for a | broker as a buyer/renter, but I admittedly don't know how | that works in Luxembourg. | | A lot of brokers specialize on ex-pats, too! | | To expand on my point about knowing the local area, brokers | know things like "what kind of person likes to live here?" Is | it a young and trendy area or a quiet family neighborhood? | | (Admittedly, that information can be based on biases rather | than data.) | | It's something to think about. I know you might be looking to | save money, but where you live is going to be a major | purchase decision. Plus, spending time on your own apartment | hunting platform isn't technically free, your time is | valuable. | | In any event, I'm sure with the kind of skills and dedication | you have you'll find a place in no time. | jrockway wrote: | > A lot of brokers work on commission that they get from | the landlord. | | It depends on the city. In NYC, the broker is pretty much | always paid for by the person looking for an apartment, and | it's quite a bit of money. I haven't looked for an | apartment for 10 years, but I think it was 5-10% of the | annual rent. (I imagine this gravy train is coming to its | end, though. 10% was fine when your employer was paying for | relocation, but in the All Remote future, this free money | goes away.) | tecleandor wrote: | Kind of similar in Spain. Usually it's equivalent to a | whole month rent. | | A new law a couple years ago mandated that, if the | landlord is not a person (a corp / company / org...) they | must be the ones paying the fee. | | But I've been "extorted" twice in the last year by | companies moving the payment to my person. And I say | "extorted" because they defer details or information | about the rental until the last minute, when you are days | away from having to leave your old place and you have no | other option. | codewithmatt wrote: | I think in NY specifically it's still structured this | way. But for the US as a whole, it's much more common for | it to come out of the seller's end. | | Honestly here in Austin, unless you're walking into an | apartment leasing office -- you're going to waste so much | on rejected application fees by not utilizing an agent to | rent a single family home. | codewithmatt wrote: | I'm not sure how Luxembourg works, but in the US the "seller" | or landlord in this case pays a fee. Obviously this may be | drastically different in Europe, but it's worth having a | conversation with an agent/broker. | | My wife is a realtor here in TX and when she is in-between | home sales she helps people find rent houses and apartments. | The seller pays a pre-agreed amount of 30-40% of the first | months rent as a type of compensation. The buyer doesn't pay | her anything at all. She is incentivized to find the right | property for her client so she can get paid, and she also is | better positioned to talk to the listing agent/landlord about | you and the current competition among applicants. She ends up | being able to save people money on application fees that | would never get approved. | b20000 wrote: | the buyer pays, as the seller adds this to the price | bombcar wrote: | In my experience finding a broker who actually does broker work | is hard enough for housing you'll buy. Even harder for just | renting. The money isn't there for them to do much more than | setup a few saved searches. | | Half the houses we looked at fit the profile we wanted but we | found ourselves. | egberts1 wrote: | This is the prime example of a phenomenal approach to aggregation | of various data using various languages, in this case on about | hunting for a decent apartment. | | Absolutely stellar form of data science! | | Keep up the great work! | candiddevmike wrote: | Government should provide apartments, free, in the center of the | city, for anyone who needs one. Housing should be a human right. | You can pay extra for a better place, but then landlords would | actually have to compete for your business instead of the other | way around. | traceroute66 wrote: | > Government should provide apartments, free, in the center of | the city, for anyone who needs one. | | During COVID lockdowns I watched lots of international TV drama | series on Netflix. | | One of those "random things I learnt on Netflix" was that they | (sort of) offer this in the UAE if you've lived & worked there | for 10+ years.[1] | | Its basically means-tested housing. So they offer anything from | interest-free 25 year loans to fully subsidised housing. | | [1] https://www.tamm.abudhabi/en/aspects-of-life/benefits-for- | em... | sofixa wrote: | The UAE are in a uniquely blessed situation where they have a | small population, not a lot of land, and a ton of valuable | resources. Not every country could pull this off without | significantly reworking how it's tax/budget/administration | work. | | That being said, there's subsidised, including to 100%, | housing in France too. And cities are legally required to | build affordable housing for those schemes, so it's not "it | exists on paper, but nothing has been built in decades so | nobody can get in". | nicoco wrote: | Are you insane? Then what, abolish poverty, stop human | exploitation, and maintain the ecosystem that allows our | species to survive? You dangerous revolutionary. | goodpoint wrote: | Not to mention ending militarism. | jfk13 wrote: | Interesting idea. What tax rate are you ready to pay? Oh, and | who defines "needs one"? | rr808 wrote: | Its actually interesting to read about housing in the Soviet | block. Housing was a right, but in reality long waiting lists, | multi generations in cramped apartments and lots of dense | blocks. But it kinda worked. I'm not sure how private stand | alone housing was allocated. | dflock wrote: | I would love some city or government to try this experiment! | asdff wrote: | Despite all the fancy new websites that crop up every couple of | years in the apartment rental space, imo the best place to find | an apartment remains craigslist. I've only ever leased spaces | through there. For the mom and pop landlords who you really want | as your landlord, they might get a new client every 10 years. 10 | years ago, they were using craiglist, and it works exactly the | same as today, so that's what they continue to use. If it gets | them a tenant its good enough to not bother learning some other | new website. For the large corporolandlords who have those bougie | amenities that perhaps you crave, they will be posting on all the | major websites including craigslist anyhow, so you might as well | use craigslist for that use case too if only to use a less | bloated website. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-09 23:00 UTC)