[HN Gopher] Occupry your next lease to negotiate a better deal
___________________________________________________________________
Occupry your next lease to negotiate a better deal
Author : jason_archmint
Score : 31 points
Date : 2025-03-17 20:12 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (occupry.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (occupry.com)
| jason_archmint wrote:
| Occupry is DeepResearch for lease contract negotiation. AI
| reasoning agents review clause-by-clause, research local
| governing statutes and best practices, and compiles a strategic
| plan for negotiating the best deal - complete with redline
| suggestions and example communications to get better terms. Let
| me know what you think: jason@echobach.com
| staticautomatic wrote:
| Honestly, I think you're going to run into UPL problems, and
| that residential renters typically have no power to negotiate
| lease terms.
| treetalker wrote:
| They already have UPL problems, whether they realize it or
| not.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Yuuup. Drafting and reviewing contracts is universally
| considered practice of law, and requires a bar license in
| the applicable jurisdiction.
| hackernudes wrote:
| UPL = Unauthorized Practice of Law
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| Heads up, at least on macOS Safari all the header-ish text is a
| dark grey color. Pretty poor contrast (even to my non-disabled
| eyes!). Definitely doesn't look intended.
| mikebonnell wrote:
| On mobile,iOS, Firefox and the website is nearly unreadable due
| to the contrast.
| cheema33 wrote:
| I own a duplex. Live on one side and rent the other. If my renter
| pulled this stunt on me, I'd show him the door.
| financypants wrote:
| Internet law: never disclose that you are a landlord
| epidemiology wrote:
| Me never wanting to live next door to my landlord caring a lot.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If my renter pulled this stunt on me, I 'd show him the
| door_
|
| What's the stunt? If they send you an AI markup, sure, that's
| obnoxious if they didn't do research to substantiate the
| suggested edits. But if they point out a clause that is illegal
| in your jurisdiction, that strikes me as a win-win.
| delecti wrote:
| Is your position that it's reasonable to evict a renter who was
| aware of their legal rights?
| detourdog wrote:
| I'm a small time landlord and I went the route of no leases.
| Everything is month to month.
|
| I think it's a better deal for everyone. I collect first and
| last months rent at move in.
|
| I'm selective and do an internet search to see what I find. 3
| years in and things are good. My first tenant is still living
| there I have had only 2 move out in less than a year.
|
| My thinking is that the relationship of providing housing is
| too intimate to trust to a legal contract.
|
| I would rather speak directly to a tenant regarding issues than
| both side trying to interpret a document. My thought is that if
| we can't work it out face to face no document will save the
| relationship and it's best for everyone to move on.
| gruez wrote:
| Contracts aren't for things are going smooth. They're for
| when things go wrong. What if a tenant is constantly late on
| their payments? What if they're excessively noisy? What if
| they claim you're not fixing things on time?
| detourdog wrote:
| Since they pay first and last they can not pay rent for 30
| Days. Once that happens I can give them 30 days notice and
| finally call the sheriff.
|
| This is called at will tenancy in my Commonwealth.
|
| Here is what our relationship is based on.
|
| https://www.mass.gov/doc/the-attorney-generals-guide-to-
| land...
| alwa wrote:
| For that matter, what if you're the tenant and you think
| the landlord isn't doing something they should?
|
| In either role, if it's month-to-month... either of you
| says to the other that it's not working out, give whatever
| the statutory notice is? And if the landlord didn't collect
| the last month's rent at the outset, maybe they end up
| eating a couple months' rent they would have made
| otherwise? And the tenant needs to scoot to find a new
| place, but like, it's fine?
|
| If either party wanted the security of a lease for a longer
| term, they could have entered into one, but they didn't,
| so... that's the deal, right? Except for really egregious
| stuff that the law would have something to say about?
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| What state is this in? This approach could be disastrous for
| you in some.
|
| >My thought is that if we can't work it out face to face no
| document will save the relationship and it's best for
| everyone to move on.
|
| I'm assuming you haven't yet run into a situation when you
| decide it's time everyone moves on but the tenant disagrees?
| detourdog wrote:
| So far so good on the tenant front. I try to screen my
| tenants for negative or positive attitudes.
|
| Down a few posts I posted the document published by
| Massachusetts attorney general that describes the
| relationships.
| pessimizer wrote:
| And a few short years later, your renter owns the entire
| duplex.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| No information about who owns this company. Given that it is very
| likely run by, in effect, landlords, I would be extremely
| suspicious of any advice it would give me as a tenant.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Given that it is very likely run by, in effect, landlords_
|
| You're correct in being sceptical of services that ask you to
| upload sensitive documents. But the specific allegation seems
| unsubstantiated in this case.
|
| You pay for the product. The privacy policy and terms of use
| are readable and reasonable. And they both have someone's
| contact information at the bottom. No obvious red flags.
| gruez wrote:
| >Given that it is very likely run by, in effect, landlords
|
| Why?
| dullcrisp wrote:
| My real estate attorney thankfully lives under a bridge.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Any time an AI product is advertised with something like "Legal
| Research Agents", a shiver goes up my spine.
|
| I see the testimonials (though, I don't put much faith in "Jane
| Doe" and "Mike Smith" testimonials), however I'm pretty sure in
| my area anyone who attempts to negotiate (especially based on an
| AI-built argument) will be told to pound sand.
|
| It's not a great market for renters here. Even blatantly illegal
| clauses are openly advertised all the time.
|
| I could maybe see a use case for checking a current lease (for
| illegal clauses and such), rather than when trying to start a
| lease.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Any time an AI product is advertised with something like
| "Legal Research Agents"
|
| In most cases a more-accurate label would be "Emotional-support
| Bullshitter", because:
|
| 1. Since nobody on the user's side _really_ knows if a provided
| fact is true or a rationale is legally coherent, that makes it
| a kind of "bullshit".
|
| 2. It's main benefit is to make the human feels more confident
| and safe in negotiations, being able to foist responsibility
| onto their digital accomplice, it supports them emotionally.
|
| 3. It sounds like "emotional-support animal", and this is
| amusing to me while alluding to another kind of misbehavior.
| neilv wrote:
| > _(though, I don 't put much faith in "Jane Doe" and "Mike
| Smith" testimonials)_
|
| If I got a great testimonial, and the person's name was Jane
| Doe, I would be sad, because people who read it would think I
| was a liar.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| "Spine shivers" are one of the most extreme tells of AI slop.
| Not that I think you used AI to generate this - but such terms
| are now poisoned.
| ziddoap wrote:
| This is ridiculous.
|
| Can I to say that? Or do you have a list of allowable words.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Anything not on this list is fine!
|
| https://github.com/sam-paech/antislop-
| sampler/blob/main/slop...
| ziddoap wrote:
| Ah, so you must be AI, you used the words "extreme" and
| "generate" in your first comment.
|
| Other words to avoid: light, alright, democracies, swap,
| ecology, windows, plate, projects...
|
| What a dumb time to be alive.
| fragmede wrote:
| "ChatGPT generate 300 words about why
| https://occupry.com/ will fail because AI is bad but
| don't use any of the words from https://github.com/sam-
| paech/antislop-sampler/blob/main/slop..."
| neilv wrote:
| > _I 'm pretty sure in my area anyone who attempts to negotiate
| (especially based on an AI-built argument) will be told to
| pound sand._
|
| That said, given the evils of RealPage YieldStar, and of
| investors hoovering up residential real estate, it would be
| nice to find a way to give some power back to the people.
|
| (Normally, this could be through law enforcement and
| legislation, but that became more complicated in the last
| couple months.)
|
| One tech-based service that would help, in a small way, is a
| widely-used reviews and reputation system for landlords and
| properties. It would have to be reputable (unlike Yelp), and to
| find some way to sustain itself, long-term, without turning
| evil.
| epidemiology wrote:
| You'll get a lot of haters from the petite bourgeoisie tech
| landlord crowd here but this is a good idea. The more tools to
| help renters negotiate against the countless predatory landlords
| the better. Even better would be ways to report or put their
| malfeasance on public record. $9 is too expensive though.
| kube-system wrote:
| I think the subset of landlords that will negotiate, and the
| ones that you need AI to help you with, are pretty small in
| overlap.
|
| There are typically two experiences in negotiation with
| landlords, at least in the US:
|
| * You rent from a small time landlord, where you're talking to
| the guy who owns the property. They'll negotiate if you talk to
| them like a human being. (and if the rental market is not very
| hot in that area)
|
| * You rent from MegaCorp. The leasing agent was hired off of
| indeed.com last week and has zero power to negotiate and will
| likely tell you "sorry the lease and prices are set by
| corporate"
| mock-possum wrote:
| Neat idea, I wish there was some sort of demo or cases study to
| read through though - I really get turned off by these product
| billboard sites that are basically just funnel users into a CRM,
| or into marketing emails / video chats.
|
| I just want to see what your product can do, not hear you tell me
| about it.
|
| (I say this even though the company I'm working for relies on
| exactly these means to acquire new customers.)
| keiferski wrote:
| This is great. In my experience the single biggest thing that
| allows landlords to take advantage of tenants is the
| inaccessibility of real estate law. Anything that makes contract
| terms more easily understandable is a win, as far as I'm
| concerned.
|
| Linking to a comment I made about dealing with this:
|
| _...one time a landlord didn 't return the security deposit. I
| called him, messaged him, left notes in his mailbox. No reply.
| One month, two months went by. So, I looked up the relevant legal
| code, found the part that said "landlords have 30 days to return
| the security deposit with any deductions listed. Failure to do so
| results in the landlord owing the tenant double the original
| amount with no deductions." I printed that out, highlighted the
| relevant section, and mailed him a letter saying that he can
| return the original deposit amount to me immediately, or I will
| file at the local court and he'll owe me double. I got a check in
| the mail two days later._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35760541
|
| Having an app point this statue out when signing a contract would
| be great.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| That is a satisfying story but it makes me wish you stuck it to
| the landlord, as they're almost certainly doing that to every
| tenant and making a killing. I get that court takes time and
| everything, I just want to hear a story that ends in justice!
| beefnugs wrote:
| Huh???? do the tiny amount of paperwork and get the double, he
| won't learn until he feels the pain, you are not helping anyone
| with this choice
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| But I dont want double in 3 years. I want what I'm owed
| today.
| Carrok wrote:
| This is just adorable. To think that prospective renters have any
| negotiating power at all when the landlord typically (in my area
| anyway) receives triple digit numbers of applications.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _to think that prospective renters have any negotiating power
| at all when the landlord typically (in my area anyway) receives
| triple digit numbers of applications_
|
| For new-lease negotiation, you're right. For renewal, in my
| experience, New York City landlords happily made small edits if
| given a good reason. (While the larger companies usually can't
| change their boilerplate documents, they're almost always fine
| adding a rider.)
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Are you kidding me? Most laws in liberal cities where this
| might be true are so tenant skewed that I downright don't want
| the risk of them doing the "squat and take 6+ months to be
| evicted but not before trashing the place" routine. No thank
| you. I'll be a landlord in some red state where I can rely on
| the power of rich capitalists to make sure that squatters spend
| their time in jail/prison instead of moving onto yet another
| owner to fleece.
|
| That's just adorable - to think that landlords have power in a
| place like Seattle or Portland or SF.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/LoveForLandchads/
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Most tenants negotiating renewal aren't going to squat. The
| leverage a renewing tenant has is the information asymmetry
| in the new-tenant market (landlord might sub out an on-time
| rent payer for a squatter) and friction of establishing a new
| lease. That's preserved in red states and blue.
| kube-system wrote:
| You both are talking about two different types of power.
| You're talking about tenancy rights, the parent was talking
| about contract negotiation power. In many big cities, tenants
| have a good number of rights _after_ they 've signed a
| contract and become a tenant. But they still have little
| power to negotiate the contract before they have become one.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| And this is why I don't touch the real estate market. Renting
| out housing is an inherently adversarial relationship; you
| either screw over your tenants or they screw over you.
| There's no fair exchange of value, there's just the scalper
| (e.g. Blackrock) who bought all the Pokemon cards^W^Whousing
| units and thus controls the supply, versus the tenant who
| wants to kick them in the shins.
|
| Personally, I don't think any of the "tenants rights" laws
| are actually fit for purpose. That is, they're designed to
| bribe the peasants into accepting their landlords. My ideal
| would be cities with complete bans on housing rental - i.e. a
| 100% owner-occupancy mandate - along with "HOUSING PRINTER GO
| BRRRR" strategies to completely obviate most demand for
| renting housing units.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Institutions only own some half a million single family
| homes. Blackstone only owns some 300k units in total. The
| supply is constrained by locals who want to "preserve
| community character" and environmentalists who want to
| "prevent gentrification" and "preserve views".
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Wherein it takes 6 months is is virtually always the case
| that it is because the court is too overburdened to handle
| the affair in a timely fashion. This is likely the case
| because the system must allocate resources that it should
| likely prefer handle criminal matters of vastly greater
| import which is already criminally slow. The result getting a
| fraction of a singular county judges time and joining a
| months long queue.
|
| This slowness of process is in fact a self reinforcing loop.
| Wherein it's possible to join a 6 month queue it makes sense
| for poor folks to do so. They might be able to get caught up
| or find adequate housing elsewhere. It can also even makes
| sense that that point to stop paying. If you fall $1000
| behind and it is expected to take $3000 to move. If you
| should find it unlikely to be able to make up the $1000 in 30
| days time and eviction should become inevitable but 6 months
| down the line.
|
| At that point what is the logical thing? Should you continue
| to pay monthly as before but never catching up and find
| yourself living in a cardboard box in 6 months OR should you
| stop paying now and use the money to move in a few months.
|
| The best resolution possible is to incentivize landlords to
| accept payment plans to bring tenants up to date whilst
| allowing resolution in 30-90 days wherein this isn't possible
| or reasonable. For instance when the tenant is damaging the
| property or otherwise violating the lease and can't be
| brought into compliance.
|
| This aligns incentives. By agreeing to a payment plan the
| tenant is incentivized to make the landlord whole and the
| landlord is incentivized not to thrust the tenants family
| into the street lest he lose the expectation of repayment of
| the funds.
|
| Because it isn't entirely objectionable from either side
| unlike losing 6 months of rent or homelessness we needn't
| fight a pointless legal battle over it. If it be the
| inevitable result of legal action the landlord will simply
| present it to the tenant as an option rather than pay a
| lawyer a substantial sum to find themselves on the same road.
|
| The alternative imposes a very high cost on society in terms
| of human suffering and in fact monetarily because it spends a
| tidy sum per homeless person.
|
| Lastly a squatter is someone who breaks into a property and
| sets up shop. Someone who lawfully enters into an agreement
| to live somewhere and ultimately fails to live up to their
| side of the obligation isn't a squatter and even in the red
| states hasn't committed a crime. They are a lawful resident
| until the eviction is fully processed and even should they
| outstay the judges order they will be removed by the police
| not processed into prison.
| aegypti wrote:
| Landlords in my area are begging for occupants and throwing
| move in promos at you when you walk in the door because the
| city allowed new housing to be built in excess after a massive
| spike in demand during the pandemic
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Your are correct in your conclusion that individuals dealing
| with corporations have little power to negotiate terms but
| incorrect in your reasoning. This is the same fallacy as
| claiming there are dozens of people willing to do any given job
| when the number of dwellings and jobs is nearly equal those
| willing to occupy or work.
|
| Because landlords and especially jobs may receive many
| applications and review relatively few applicants are often
| obliged to submit many applications leading to many
| applications for each job but not many applicants for each job.
|
| The most obvious cause is not merely selectivity but the desire
| to leave the job app/dwelling listed until the process is fully
| complete and listings which already have a pre-selected
| applicants but which are listed for legal reasons.
|
| In fact the sector is most often only actually spoiled for
| choice only when offering something that is fundamentally a
| better deal than the price as in any other market even when the
| factors are intangibles that aren't factored into the price
| like competent management and good neighbors.
|
| That is to say that given 6 tenants and 6 landlords all 6
| landlords may say they have 5 other tenants competing for the
| spot only if they all count the same tenants and those offering
| undesirable terms even at the same price will find they have to
| settle on average for less desirable tenants.
|
| Then they can all go online and complain that all tenants are
| terrible and talk about how it took 6 months to dig the non-
| paying tenant out like a tick.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Sounds more like losing out on the place you wanted because
| they rented it to someone that didn't haggle them.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Great idea. I think that the marketing page is too tech-y. It's
| got way too many details, uses terms like agents etc. The average
| joe doesn't know or care what an ai agent is, and it's not gonna
| help sell your product.
|
| I would focus less on verbose feature lists and pivot to some
| real world examples reflecting the capabilities of the tool. This
| person saved $150/mo, this person was able to keep their pet,
| etc.
|
| Best thing you could do is ditch the enter your email blob and
| instead allow a user to upload their PDF/doc lease and then give
| them a teaser/sample of what they have in store if they proceed.
| "we found 3 issues with your lease, 2 laws being broken, 1 fee
| that is illegal, etc"
| prats226 wrote:
| SEO and UX feedback: All the headers and H1/H2 tags are black in
| color with dark blue background making text unreadable
| soared wrote:
| This needs a sample lease and sample outputs - I've really got no
| idea what it could do to negotiate a lease, etc. but agreed with
| other comments - landlords on my area would likely just tell you
| to leave if you tried any redlines.
| throwaway638637 wrote:
| There is still a Jane Doe testimonial up, which makes me distrust
| the rest of them
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-03-17 23:01 UTC)