Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

rentpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 255 posts

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#141

Post by kin »

DanBlake wrote: post #50

I own with my father a 30 unit building. With that, let me just address the tagline: "Connect with tenants effortlessly, automate rent with online rent collection, organize work orders, and much more!" - Connect with tenants effortlessly - Not a good thing, Usually leads to excess work orders, more "asks" and petty squabbles about this and that. - Automate rent with online rent collection - Not sure how this is going…

As a tenant to several both tech and non-tech complexes in SoCal I would like to say that because you wouldn't use the product, because you worry about a paper trail, I would rather not live at your complex.

The difference in customer service between say, an Archstone community with amazing online customer service from online bill-pay to online maintenance requests to say, a complex that runs by paper and phone calls, is night and day.

This service solves such a big problem that I myself have been rough drafting a similar website but looks like these guys are way ahead of the game. Congrats and I hope it does well, I know I certainly would use it as a tenant.

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#142

Post by jacquesm »

oojacoboo wrote: post #117
jacquesm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, cool. The title and the homepage made me suspect otherwise. What's interesting to me is that all the people that I know that own rental properties have outsourced the handling for a %age of the rent. That may be a cultural thing though, but from what I know about the market typically landlords are interested in the monthly payment, not in dealing with the tenants, if they can afford it at all they'll get someone…

We're targeting both, landlords are smaller, and property management companies are larger. Their needs a very similar though. To get our base established, we are mostly targeting somewhat tech savvy landlords and small property management companies. We'll grow into larger and larger property management companies over time though.

Ok. What was your most compelling reason for not launching in an earlier phase of the development?

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#143

Post by ululululu »

DanBlake wrote: post #107
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to attack you personally, but your response is typical of the real estate industry, and exactly why there's a hole in the market worth billions. For whatever reason, customer service is almost uniformly bad in the real estate industry. It's so bad, people don't even realize how bad it is, because they've never had anything else to choose from. For example, this kind of attitude makes me really sad: I t…

How did you come off saying that our customer service is bad? Thats a pretty big jump without knowing me or our business. Dont assume that because we dont want to induce more work orders / complaints that we have bad service. What you are saying is "bad" is akin to me asking why sites dont have a "Dissatisfied? Click here for a refund" button on every page. Providing absolute ultimate customer service will cause you…

slumlord

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#144

Post by oojacoboo »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #130
DanBlake wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you come off saying that our customer service is bad? Thats a pretty big jump without knowing me or our business. Dont assume that because we dont want to induce more work orders / complaints that we have bad service. What you are saying is "bad" is akin to me asking why sites dont have a "Dissatisfied? Click here for a refund" button on every page. Providing absolute ultimate customer service will cause you…

Again, don't take it personally, but I've been doing real estate for the last six years and I've spent tons of time talking to other investors and landlords. I also still rent because the returns in SF for buying are so abysmal. So I've had plenty of exposure to the way the real estate industry works. And the customer service is almost uniformly terrible. I read your statement as saying that you didn't want to make i…

You forgot to mention that their tenant turnover is much lower which drastically reduces their marketing overhead ;)

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#145

Post by kleinsch »

I see that you offer a 14 day free trial. How does someone go about doing a trial of software that transforms the entire process of running an apartment building? You get all your tenants to sign up with this system, then change your mind and make them sign up with a new system again?

It might be more useful to have a live demo system people can log into both as a tenant and landlord to see how it works.

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#146

Post by rwhitman »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #101
DanBlake wrote: post #50

I own with my father a 30 unit building. With that, let me just address the tagline: "Connect with tenants effortlessly, automate rent with online rent collection, organize work orders, and much more!" - Connect with tenants effortlessly - Not a good thing, Usually leads to excess work orders, more "asks" and petty squabbles about this and that. - Automate rent with online rent collection - Not sure how this is going…

I'm not trying to attack you personally, but your response is typical of the real estate industry, and exactly why there's a hole in the market worth billions. For whatever reason, customer service is almost uniformly bad in the real estate industry. It's so bad, people don't even realize how bad it is, because they've never had anything else to choose from. For example, this kind of attitude makes me really sad: I t…

The problem is the landlord-tenant relationship is asymmetrical. As a tenant you want to live in a particular place, whether its for location, or amenities, or price etc.

When you lease an apartment, the landlord's record of customer service is almost never a factor in signing the lease. It just never comes up. And the cost of moving is so high that its unlikely someone will leave a unit because the landlord sucked (I know this from experience). So the landlord doesn't have to compete with other landlords based on customer service, they compete based on the price, location and amenities of the units they offer.

So there's really no incentive for most landlords to be better landlords. The only ones who try, are mostly just doing it to follow the law or out of a sense of fairness.

The market just doesn't really reward landlords enough for their customer service ability...

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#147

Post by ryanwaggoner »

ululululu wrote: post #143
DanBlake wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you come off saying that our customer service is bad? Thats a pretty big jump without knowing me or our business. Dont assume that because we dont want to induce more work orders / complaints that we have bad service. What you are saying is "bad" is akin to me asking why sites dont have a "Dissatisfied? Click here for a refund" button on every page. Providing absolute ultimate customer service will cause you…

slumlord

That's not productive :)

Dan isn't a bad guy, I can almost guarantee you. Tenants can be difficult to deal with, and there's just a certain status quo in the industry that everyone has come to accept. I'm just saying that there's a better way, and things like RentPost.com and RentMonitor.com are a step in the right direction.

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#148

Post by oojacoboo »

oojacoboo wrote: post #117
jacquesm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, cool. The title and the homepage made me suspect otherwise. What's interesting to me is that all the people that I know that own rental properties have outsourced the handling for a %age of the rent. That may be a cultural thing though, but from what I know about the market typically landlords are interested in the monthly payment, not in dealing with the tenants, if they can afford it at all they'll get someone…

We're targeting both, landlords are smaller, and property management companies are larger. Their needs a very similar though. To get our base established, we are mostly targeting somewhat tech savvy landlords and small property management companies. We'll grow into larger and larger property management companies over time though.

We had a private beta.

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#149

Post by jacquesm »

darwinGod wrote: post #47
marknutter wrote: post #8

The design is sick. Wonderfully balance color scheme, beautiful call-to action buttons (I clicked "see pricing" a few times just because I was compelled to), and I love that it's iPad and iPhone compatible out of the gate. These are my initial impressions, I didn't dive too much into the content. But looks great on the surface!

"The design is sick" - think there may be a typo there, reading your comment- "slick"? :P

Given the rest of the comment, yes, that's a typo.

Re: Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

#150

Post by utunga »

kleinsch wrote: post #114
axod wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offtopic, but why the hell are people still using cash/check to pay bills in this day and age? What country are you in? Do they not have modern banking?

Banks charge 1-2% as a credit card fee, but no fees for using checks. In my building, they pass the fee along to me (the tenant), so it's in my best interest to pay by check.

sounds like perverse incentives - surely there is a lot more cost (human review, for one) to processing a check than an electronic transfer. here in NZ the bank fees for automatic payments or debit card like transfer is less than checks and consequently checks are phasing out fast, almost gone
Post reply on HN