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

Show HN: Find a home close to work

openlistings.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 68 posts

Re: Show HN: Find a home close to work

#31

Post by ruswick »

rgbrgb wrote: post #4

Hey HN, I'm a founder at Open Listings and did a lot of the engineering of this project. We got a lot of inquiries from tech workers who really cared about their commute times, so we used Googles Distance Matrix API [0] to sort listings by commute time. I'll be on here with my cofounders today to answer any questions you might have. [0]: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/distancemat...

I see that you are only targeting the big companies. This is really smart, since those companies tend to pay better and their employees will have a bunch more cash to throw at their house, leading to a bigger commission.

What are your plans for adding new companies? Are you going to branch out into firms that might not pay as well? Stick with the "top 1%" companies but in different cities?

Real estate service that focuses on tech people seems lucrative. Good idea all around.

Re: Show HN: Find a home close to work

#32

Post by eitally »

rconti wrote: post #28
coldcode wrote: post #7

The site is very nice, but how does anyone afford houses that expensive in those areas? I live in Texas and my nice modern 2000 SF house is only $190.

$190k, I assume. Salaries are higher here for one. Say $190k vs 4x as much, $760k. Assuming magic 10% down appears in your pocket, 0% property tax, ignore the differences in state/local taxes, and assume a spherical chicken in a vacuum.... $3200/mo vs $800/mo. 4 times as much! Wow! That's a lot of money. Right? Except.. it's "only" $29k/yr. Most cost-of-living expenses don't scale with income. Now, of course, your sa…

Imho, the biggest problem (especially in the Bay Area) is that there's such a ridiculous ratio of cash buyers to available properties that even folks who have a typical 20% down payment are still having a hard time buying starter homes in desirable ("close to work") areas. For example, I have $200k equity in my current home (NC) and if I move to the San Jose area that would still require me to put in another $100-200k of savings to "compete" for a mediocre 1500-2000sqft place near work. At that point, I'd be going from a $2k/mo mortgage to a $4k/mo mortgage, plus a 3x in annual property taxes because the home is so much more expensive. I disagree with your "only" incremental additional income requirement in this case, because if the alternative to buying a "cheap" home is paying $4000+/mo rent (I have two kids and need at least a 2BR apt), that just delays home buying even further while I throw away potential DP/mortgage on rent.

Perhaps I am being unreasonable because I'm coming from a low CoL state, but I think the 1/3 your salary rule is a very good, smart target (unless you can easily get a HELOC or equity loan in case of emergency because you put so much down when you bought the place).

Re: Show HN: Find a home close to work

#33

Post by nicolewhite »

rconti wrote: post #23
nicolewhite wrote: post #18

The rent explosion article[0] seems relevant. No 1 bedroom apartments for less than $3000 near my San Mateo office. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10050545

Odd. Just last year I was renting a 2/1 house in Belmont for $2k, until we bought a house. My buddy's renting a 2/1 in San Mateo for $3k. How close is "close"? I'd expect 1bd apartments to be cheaper than entire houses.

Whatever the default was, I believe it was looking for stuff within a 20 minute drive. I'm currently in a studio in San Mateo for $2.3k, but that's only because I stayed in the same unit I was in last year, so they only raised rent by 10%. If I were a new resident, my studio is around $2.7k.

Re: Show HN: Find a home close to work

#34

Post by jschoenholtz »

jboggan wrote: post #27
rgbrgb wrote: post #4

Hey HN, I'm a founder at Open Listings and did a lot of the engineering of this project. We got a lot of inquiries from tech workers who really cared about their commute times, so we used Googles Distance Matrix API [0] to sort listings by commute time. I'll be on here with my cofounders today to answer any questions you might have. [0]: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/distancemat...

I clicked on my last company (Factual in LA) and the first listing was for a $18M penthouse. It also said that the buyer would get a $225k+ refund from Open Listings for buying through them - how does that work? But seriously, it is a very neat tool, thanks for making it.

Thanks! We'd love to get you into that penthouse...

When you buy a home, your agent is paid a 2.5% commission to represent you in the transaction. As a real estate brokerage, Open Listings replaces your agent and facilitates the transaction on your behalf. At close, we refund you half of the commission we receive, usually crediting the refund against your closing costs.

Here's a more detailed explanation plus a fun slider: https://www.openlistings.co/our-commission-refund

Re: Show HN: Find a home close to work

#35

Post by encoderer »

rgbrgb wrote: post #6
stephengillie wrote: post #2

Very interesting. The site looks clean and it's fast. Where do you get your data? I used to work for one of the industry dinosaurs; our only competitive advantage was that we had agreements with most of the 674 MLSes to rehost their data for our clients, which were RE Agent companies. Zillow is still using Trulia as a pipe to funnel that MLS data from my former employer. Is that one of the reasons for piloting in CA…

As a California RE brokerage we join each MLS and get a direct feed from their RETS api. It's a dramatically better data feed than any of the aggregators offer and we get listings the minute they come on market (well our polling interval is more like 5 minutes). So far we have 100% coverage in San Francisco, Oakland/East Bay, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles. We've just joined the San Diego MLS and will have data ther…

You should check out https://rets.ly/

Re: Show HN: Find a home close to work

#37

Post by encoderer »

eitally wrote: post #32
rconti wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$190k, I assume. Salaries are higher here for one. Say $190k vs 4x as much, $760k. Assuming magic 10% down appears in your pocket, 0% property tax, ignore the differences in state/local taxes, and assume a spherical chicken in a vacuum.... $3200/mo vs $800/mo. 4 times as much! Wow! That's a lot of money. Right? Except.. it's "only" $29k/yr. Most cost-of-living expenses don't scale with income. Now, of course, your sa…

Imho, the biggest problem (especially in the Bay Area) is that there's such a ridiculous ratio of cash buyers to available properties that even folks who have a typical 20% down payment are still having a hard time buying starter homes in desirable ("close to work") areas. For example, I have $200k equity in my current home (NC) and if I move to the San Jose area that would still require me to put in another $100-200…

"I have $200k equity in my current home (NC) and if I move to the San Jose area that would still require me to put in another $100-200k of savings to "compete" for a mediocre 1500-2000sqft place near work."

Do you mean you'd need that $400k down to "compete"?

You would have no problem buying a $1MM home on credit with your 20% down. That would buy you a decent place in San Jose. You could also buy the same home with 10% down, though that will require PMI on your mortgage. In either case, I don't believe you would have too much trouble from cash buyers. Yes, cash means a shorter escrow period. But if you offer more than the cash buyer, most sellers will take the higher bid. Your offer would waive your loan contingency (by getting your financing locked-down in a commitment letter).

Re: Show HN: Find a home close to work

#38

Post by rgbrgb »

ruswick wrote: post #31
rgbrgb wrote: post #4

Hey HN, I'm a founder at Open Listings and did a lot of the engineering of this project. We got a lot of inquiries from tech workers who really cared about their commute times, so we used Googles Distance Matrix API [0] to sort listings by commute time. I'll be on here with my cofounders today to answer any questions you might have. [0]: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/distancemat...

I see that you are only targeting the big companies. This is really smart, since those companies tend to pay better and their employees will have a bunch more cash to throw at their house, leading to a bigger commission. What are your plans for adding new companies? Are you going to branch out into firms that might not pay as well? Stick with the "top 1%" companies but in different cities? Real estate service that fo…

You can use the search box to find your company if it's marked on google maps. It'll try to pull an image too using the Clearbit company logo API [0].

The list is crudely sorted by number of page views so it'll tend to just show the big companies.

[0]: http://blog.clearbit.com/logo

Re: Show HN: Find a home close to work

#39

Post by rgbrgb »

encoderer wrote: post #35
rgbrgb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a California RE brokerage we join each MLS and get a direct feed from their RETS api. It's a dramatically better data feed than any of the aggregators offer and we get listings the minute they come on market (well our polling interval is more like 5 minutes). So far we have 100% coverage in San Francisco, Oakland/East Bay, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles. We've just joined the San Diego MLS and will have data ther…

You should check out https://rets.ly/

Been on their beta list for almost a year. They've since been acquired by zillow so we're not holding our breath.

Re: Show HN: Find a home close to work

#40

Post by PeterWhittaker »

rgbrgb wrote: post #4

Hey HN, I'm a founder at Open Listings and did a lot of the engineering of this project. We got a lot of inquiries from tech workers who really cared about their commute times, so we used Googles Distance Matrix API [0] to sort listings by commute time. I'll be on here with my cofounders today to answer any questions you might have. [0]: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/distancemat...

Hey, with cookies disabled, the site displays nothing at all, simply a blank page.

(A favourite hobby horse of mine. I accept cookies only from specific sites, whitelisted after consideration.)

Post reply on HN