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Datamining a Flat in Munich

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Re: Datamining a Flat in Munich

#71

Post by lafar6502 »

stef25 wrote: post #65
lafar6502 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a basic right of an owner to rent his property to anyone he likes without explaining the decision (even if the decision is based on racial prejudice)?

I hope so. It's done on AirBnb, you're perfectly within your rights to refuse a request if something feels fishy.

even more, you can refuse any request and nobody can force you to rent if you decide not to. AirBNB is not anonymous, people are expected to give some information about themselves so the landlords can judge them and make a decision. I think nobody would rent a flat to a completely anonymous person. Is this insane or what? My house is not a hostel...

Re: Datamining a Flat in Munich

#72

Post by freyfogle »

stef25 wrote: post #66
freyfogle wrote: post #4

My sympathies, I lived in Munich 15 years ago and it was a nightmare to find a place even back then. I've heard it's only gotten worse. We (Nestoria.de) aggregate listings of most of the players in real estate in Germany (IS24, immowelt, immonet, süddeutsche, others) and offer an API. We also offer an API of price trends (ie what the avg rent is in an area and if it's going up or down). Enjoy: http://www.nestoria.co.…

Do you scrape those sites, or use their rss feeds or ... ? I think it's a great concept, just wonder about the legality of it.

We have contracts with and datafeeds from all of them. We've been in business since 2006, in Germany since 2008.

We work very closely with our partners to try to improve the data. It's not always easy. I gave a talk about this at csv,conf in Berlin in July, slides are here: http://www.slideshare.net/lokku/a-living-hell-lessons-learne...

Re: Datamining a Flat in Munich

#73

Post by gambiting »

vertex-four wrote: post #68
gambiting wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it has more to do with age than to do with origin. When I was looking for a place in the UK after getting my first job and earning decent money I was straight up told by an agency that many landlords wouldn't even consider me because I was "too young to rent a house", even though I had the money for it. Age discrimination is perfectly legal everywhere(apart from job interviews maybe) - think car insurance - s…

> Age discrimination is perfectly legal everywhere It's protected alongside the statuses of disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation, to more-or-less the same extent in theory. There are, however, glaring exceptions when it comes to housing (due to how this protection intersects with property rights), as housing agency industry groups, hous…

I think the most glaring omission is car insurance - if you enquire about insurance you will be straight up told that because you are under 25, the premium is going to be 4x of what it would be normally. No-one bats an eyelid at that - statistics prove that young drivers crash more, so it's all fine, right??

Funnily enough, statistically men crash more than women too - but it's illegal to charge men more, because that would be gender discrimination. It's also illegal to charge someone more for insurance because they are black, christian, or a vegetarian - regardless of how many accidents members of those groups get into. And yet if you are 24, have been driving more than 6 years without an accident, you will still pay more than someone who is 25 and has passed their exam last week. If that is not discrimination then I have absolutely no idea what is.

Re: Datamining a Flat in Munich

#74

Post by vertex-four »

gambiting wrote: post #73
vertex-four wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Age discrimination is perfectly legal everywhere It's protected alongside the statuses of disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation, to more-or-less the same extent in theory. There are, however, glaring exceptions when it comes to housing (due to how this protection intersects with property rights), as housing agency industry groups, hous…

I think the most glaring omission is car insurance - if you enquire about insurance you will be straight up told that because you are under 25, the premium is going to be 4x of what it would be normally. No-one bats an eyelid at that - statistics prove that young drivers crash more, so it's all fine, right?? Funnily enough, statistically men crash more than women too - but it's illegal to charge men more, because tha…

Indeed. Unfortunately, the car insurance industry has enough clout to keep doing whatever they want to do, pretty much.

We'll see what the EU do eventually - but I'm going to bet the UK either ignore it or find a loophole.

Re: Datamining a Flat in Munich

#75

Post by dbasedow »

Two years ago I was in a similar situation. I had 6 weeks to find a fully furnished apartment in Munich from 800km away. For me the response rate for furnished apartments was 100%, although some simply said the apartment has been rented out already.

I also turned to crawling. I regularly crawled IS24's furnished apartment section and put new entries into a Google Fusion Table. That way I could filter on fields and see the apartments on a map at the same time. This wasn't automated as much as the original poster's solution. But my main requirement was that the apartment be near a subway station of a line that stops at my place of work, which is not that easy to automate.

After about a week I found an apartment that was rented out by the owner directly (none of that agent fee nonsense). I was the first to contact the guy - a few minutes after it was posted. I had to decide if I take it the same day. Based only on pictures... It was a good deal. Colleagues of mine were paying MUCH MORE and got MUCH LESS.

Re: Datamining a Flat in Munich

#76

Post by hippich »

tzmudzin wrote: post #53
lafar6502 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a basic right of an owner to rent his property to anyone he likes without explaining the decision (even if the decision is based on racial prejudice)?

Not quite, as long as we as a society want to protect the minorities. Either you force equal treatment, or things can escalate quite quickly: - basic right of owner to rent property to anyone he likes without explaining the decision (and not to rent to anyone else...) - basic right of hotel owner to accept anyone he choses (and deny access to anyone else) - basic right of restarant manager to accept anyone he chooses…

I wonder why economic laws does not work here? I.e. if certain categories of people comes with certain risk in the eyes of landlords, this should be reflected in price, and who don't want to have to deal with adjusting price for risks should loose to once who are more flexible?

Re: Datamining a Flat in Munich

#77

Post by GFischer »

freyfogle wrote: post #72
stef25 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you scrape those sites, or use their rss feeds or ... ? I think it's a great concept, just wonder about the legality of it.

We have contracts with and datafeeds from all of them. We've been in business since 2006, in Germany since 2008. We work very closely with our partners to try to improve the data. It's not always easy. I gave a talk about this at csv,conf in Berlin in July, slides are here: http://www.slideshare.net/lokku/a-living-hell-lessons-learne...

Haha, I went through a smaller-scale version of those problems, and your presentation is spot-on :) , I can totally relate.

Re: Datamining a Flat in Munich

#78

Post by rmc »

stef25 wrote: post #64
petercooper wrote: post #5

The conclusion from this little study, is that a girl with an italian name, gets an 90% answer rate, a guy with an arab name and is younger than 25 gets, 1% answer rate. The master of all, is the young munich guy who is around 25 Sadly, this doesn't surprise me. Across Europe, numerous anti-discrimination laws have been (rightfully) enacted, but it just pushes any inclination to discriminate that might exist into pri…

Can you use the law to punish someone for not responding to an email from 21 year old Mohammed asking if he can rent your apartment? Renting out an apartment can lead to some very difficult situations (basically because the law isn't going to help you get out of them). Everyone I know that rents out properties here in Belgium applies a very strict filter when selecting tenants; I would do the same and not feel bad ab…

Can you use the law to punish someone for not responding to an email from 21 year old Mohammed asking if he can rent your apartment?

Yes. If you will not rent out your apartment to someone based on their ethnicity/race, that's illegal. If you don't like it, get out of the apartment rental business.

It's just so hard to prosecute people for it.

Re: Datamining a Flat in Munich

#79

Post by anvarik »

gambiting wrote: post #10
petercooper wrote: post #5

The conclusion from this little study, is that a girl with an italian name, gets an 90% answer rate, a guy with an arab name and is younger than 25 gets, 1% answer rate. The master of all, is the young munich guy who is around 25 Sadly, this doesn't surprise me. Across Europe, numerous anti-discrimination laws have been (rightfully) enacted, but it just pushes any inclination to discriminate that might exist into pri…

I think it has more to do with age than to do with origin. When I was looking for a place in the UK after getting my first job and earning decent money I was straight up told by an agency that many landlords wouldn't even consider me because I was "too young to rent a house", even though I had the money for it. Age discrimination is perfectly legal everywhere(apart from job interviews maybe) - think car insurance - s…

OP says a german guy named Hans gets answer all the time. So has nothing to do with age.

Re: Datamining a Flat in Munich

#80

Post by sgift »

hippich wrote: post #76
tzmudzin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite, as long as we as a society want to protect the minorities. Either you force equal treatment, or things can escalate quite quickly: - basic right of owner to rent property to anyone he likes without explaining the decision (and not to rent to anyone else...) - basic right of hotel owner to accept anyone he choses (and deny access to anyone else) - basic right of restarant manager to accept anyone he chooses…

I wonder why economic laws does not work here? I.e. if certain categories of people comes with certain risk in the eyes of landlords, this should be reflected in price, and who don't want to have to deal with adjusting price for risks should loose to once who are more flexible?

High demand, low supply. A landlord in Munich can ask - more or less - whatever he wants and still find people who are desperate to get a flat. Any flat. For any price.
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