[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.
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