Apartment baiting with Facebook Ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Apartment baiting with Facebook Ads

#91

Post by QuarterReptile » Thu, May 17, 2018, 3:13 AM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #62

dbatten wrote: post #5

Somebody should build a service for this. My wife and I recently moved and, while we ended up somewhere we like, there was one particular street right next to our old house that we always wished we would be able to get a home on. When we talked to other neighbors that were thinking about moving, we found out that we were far from the only ones eyeing that street. Unfortunately, people there rarely sold and, when they…

I get letters like this sometimes (people looking to buy either in our area or specifically our house). This only works when you personalize your letter to the specific house, and sell yourself - i.e. not send a generic 'call me if you want to sell', because then people will assume you're a realtor. I don't think this can be made into a service - it only works when you're clearly not a business and when you can show…

And any attempt to turn it into a business will probably only set the bar higher for doing it in earnest.

Re: Apartment baiting with Facebook Ads

#92

Post by mdn0420 » Thu, May 17, 2018, 4:36 AM UTC

astura wrote: post #45

mdn0420 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Direct mail marketing is a popular strategy in the real estate investing world. You can pull lists of properties+owners and filter by various criteria. Foreclosures or absentee owners are some pretty common ones.

Do you know what services they use to find those people? Are there ones tailored to real estate investors? Just our of curiosity.

listsource.com is one. Real estate investors are certainly a big consumer of these services but probably not the only ones.

Re: Apartment baiting with Facebook Ads

#93

Post by hackathonguy » Thu, May 17, 2018, 7:42 AM UTC

_RPM wrote: post #29

Why ground floor?

OP here. We have twins, and many apartment buildings in Jerusalem lack elevators. Also, I’ve found quality of life to be markedly improved once we’ve moved to a garden apartment! :-)

Re: Apartment baiting with Facebook Ads

#94

Post by hackathonguy » Thu, May 17, 2018, 7:44 AM UTC

abathur wrote: post #7

This made me curious about whether there are good lifehacker-style articles/listicles/compendia of creative personal uses of targeted advertising platforms. Not sure if the answer is no, or if it's just one of those ungoogleable ideas.

OP here. Totally! There are a few good examples in this thread. Let’s create a list!

Re: Apartment baiting with Facebook Ads

#95

Post by hackathonguy » Thu, May 17, 2018, 7:45 AM UTC

methodover wrote: post #78

> Couple looking for 2-bedroom in neighbourhood. Budget: $1250. God I need to move out of the bay area. I pay $1000 more than that for my one bedroom in Oakland. And it's not even in a great area... And it's not even that nice of an apartment! Great idea what this guy did. Maybe I should give it a shot.

That’s amazing. Jerusalem is considered the most expensive real estate market in Israel (apart from Tel Aviv), and $1250 is definitely on the high side for a two bedroom.

Re: Apartment baiting with Facebook Ads

#96

Post by hackathonguy » Thu, May 17, 2018, 7:47 AM UTC

jcl wrote: post #33

ericst wrote: post #2

Well, that is a rather clever use of Facebook Ads. I knew a guy who tried to use them as a dating service, I guess the lack of incentive is what made his trial fail...

One guy used them to prank his roommate: http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-... (I was kind of disappointed that the "hypertargeted ad" link in the article went to a generic how-to article instead of that post.)

Amazing post! Will add to the article.

Re: Apartment baiting with Facebook Ads

#97

Post by hackathonguy » Thu, May 17, 2018, 7:51 AM UTC

fcbrooklyn wrote: post #82

I'm not sure if it would matter, if you were just doing this as an individual once or twice, but it's worth noting that in New York State, at least, this would be an illegal transaction, unless the tenant referring you to their landlord happened to be a licensed real estate agent. The definition of brokering a transaction according to state law, for which you must be licensed is that you're facilitating the transacti…

OP here. Where I live, it’s legal to broker one transaction per year without any special license. Not sure about the legal situation in New York, though.

Re: Apartment baiting with Facebook Ads

#98

Post by hackathonguy » Thu, May 17, 2018, 7:51 AM UTC

samsolomon wrote: post #12

There really is a ton of stuff you can do with Facebook ads. I got one of my first jobs out of college by running ads targeted to the types of companies I wanted to work for. https://solomon.io/how-to-get-a-job-interview-tomorrow-using...

Very cool! Thanks for sharing!

Re: Apartment baiting with Facebook Ads

#99

Post by himom » Thu, May 17, 2018, 9:23 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #90

ada1981 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, it’s illegal not to rent to single moms. But maybe you don’t want to. So you can look through the tenants looking for a place and hand pick one before advertising your place. Or maybe you don’t like gay folks, or black folks, etc.

It’s not that hard to discriminate and make it hard for someone to prove that’s what you’re doing.

I was at Oren’s Hummus Shop in Mountain View when an Israeli-American couple were plopped down next to me. They procesed to converse loudly, and the male smugly boasted about how “horribly old” one rental candidate was, how he’d just waste his time and say it was already rented. Ageism never gets old, but then when it does, it gets bitter as the younger ageism treats it like the elderly in Korea... eventually, it jumps from a bridge due to poverty, shunning, isolation and neglect.

Re: Apartment baiting with Facebook Ads

#100

Post by ssharp » Thu, May 17, 2018, 11:59 AM UTC

newfoundglory wrote: post #77

ssharp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We thought about sending letters to see if somebody wanted to sell to us without going the realtor route, but we never did. We actually just bought a house doing this exact thing. There was one particular area that only had about 30 houses in it and they don't come up for sale that much. Since we really wanted to move this year, we sent letters to the houses we'd want in that area. To our surprise, out of the dozen…

> It also gives the sellers certainty of sale so when they go to buy another house, they don't have to deal with contingency offers. A sale isn’t certain until it’s closed, so unless you are suggesting a sale and lease-back arrangement, it doesn’t really change the sellers situation.

You can work out a lease-back for 60 days on most mortgages and some mortgages don't have any leasing restrictions. I'd say some lease-back would happen in this type of arrangement the vast majority of times.