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I need to find an apartment

mattrighetti.com

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Re: I need to find an apartment

#11

Post by mattrighetti »

dangus wrote: post #8

I appreciate the talent and ingenuity behind this apartment hunting project. I just wonder if OP ever thought of contacting a broker? I would have done that before I wrote a single line of code. Scraping all this data is really great, but a human broker is going to know the local area and the other human nuances of apartment searching in the local area. Plus, brokers already have access to their own software that’s d…

I didn't actually, I'm trying to save as much money as possible at the moment and while a broker would be a good solution it would be a bit pricey for me. Maybe when I'm older and willing to spend money on relocating that would be a better solution for sure!

Re: I need to find an apartment

#12

Post by est31 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #2

At least OP had the full address of those apartment on that website, so he could plot them on the map. Here in Austria, most leeches, sorry, realtors, avoid putting the street in the ad to prevent you from trying to contact the property directly and bypassing their fees, so apartment hunting is even more of a headache. Still, amazing work from OP.

When I searched for my apartment, I was able to reverse engineer the home's address sometimes when the general vicinity was specified, then looking at the pictures, and comparing them with Google street view. This was a manual process however and only worked if enough outside views were available. Despite the time effort, you still spent less time on it per house than making an appointment for a viewing, getting there, and looking at it. If Google allows you to download the street views for an entire city, one might build an ML solution to bring up candidates at least.

Similarly, in the city where I studied for university, I immediately knew where the house was located just from outside pictures of it in the ad, at least for the districts of the city I was familiar with.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#13

Post by [deleted] »

haswell wrote: post #4

I'm in the middle of an apartment search. I was reflecting the other day on how much searching for an apartment has changed over the last 10 years. Conclusion: it hasn't changed much at all. It's still necessary to search on a myriad of sites. Most of the time, by the time you inquire, a place is gone. Or the ad was misleading and that "$2000 2BR" is actually "$2000 for the cheapest Studio we have, but we also have 2…

[deleted]

Re: I need to find an apartment

#14

Post by dangus »

mattrighetti wrote: post #11
dangus wrote: post #8

I appreciate the talent and ingenuity behind this apartment hunting project. I just wonder if OP ever thought of contacting a broker? I would have done that before I wrote a single line of code. Scraping all this data is really great, but a human broker is going to know the local area and the other human nuances of apartment searching in the local area. Plus, brokers already have access to their own software that’s d…

I didn't actually, I'm trying to save as much money as possible at the moment and while a broker would be a good solution it would be a bit pricey for me. Maybe when I'm older and willing to spend money on relocating that would be a better solution for sure!

A lot of brokers work on commission that they get from the landlord. At least where I live, you don’t really pay for a broker as a buyer/renter, but I admittedly don’t know how that works in Luxembourg.

A lot of brokers specialize on ex-pats, too!

To expand on my point about knowing the local area, brokers know things like “what kind of person likes to live here?” Is it a young and trendy area or a quiet family neighborhood?

(Admittedly, that information can be based on biases rather than data.)

It’s something to think about. I know you might be looking to save money, but where you live is going to be a major purchase decision. Plus, spending time on your own apartment hunting platform isn’t technically free, your time is valuable.

In any event, I’m sure with the kind of skills and dedication you have you’ll find a place in no time.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#15

Post by Etheryte »

haswell wrote: post #4

I'm in the middle of an apartment search. I was reflecting the other day on how much searching for an apartment has changed over the last 10 years. Conclusion: it hasn't changed much at all. It's still necessary to search on a myriad of sites. Most of the time, by the time you inquire, a place is gone. Or the ad was misleading and that "$2000 2BR" is actually "$2000 for the cheapest Studio we have, but we also have 2…

As someone who just jumped through all the hoops to find a new apartment, the pain is real. I think the main issue is that the incentives are misaligned from the perspective of the seeker. Where I'm currently at (the Netherlands), the market is dominated by agents. Using an agent makes sense from the perspective of the apartment owner — they will take care of managing the ads, initial screening, arranging viewings etc. Given how many people contact a single viewing, you definitely don't want them hitting your personal inbox or phone.

From the agent's perspective, it's good to drive people to their company's website rather than one of the big aggregate ones. Having more people visit it means they're more likely to do business with that company specifically. Getting people to visit your company's site is pretty straightforward: they put up ads there earlier, often so much earlier that by the time you see an ad on an aggregate site, it's already fully booked for viewings.

And that's how we end up with dozens of different company sites, each crappy in their own way, and in the middle of it all, people trying to find a home pulling their hair out, refreshing a bunch of different websites every few hours.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#16

Post by bilekas »

Ciao, I had the same problem moving to Italy, specifically Bologna.. Super student rich town so apartments are gone fast, I setup a crawler of the usual sites but one or two had live updates for locations that would be published through their site's websocket, after a few hours I had the rasPi subscribed and could get notifications to me as soon as they were available, bypassing the need to sit on the website.

It was a pain after for bureaucracy but that was after landing an apartment.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#17

Post by jrockway »

dangus wrote: post #14
mattrighetti wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't actually, I'm trying to save as much money as possible at the moment and while a broker would be a good solution it would be a bit pricey for me. Maybe when I'm older and willing to spend money on relocating that would be a better solution for sure!

A lot of brokers work on commission that they get from the landlord. At least where I live, you don’t really pay for a broker as a buyer/renter, but I admittedly don’t know how that works in Luxembourg. A lot of brokers specialize on ex-pats, too! To expand on my point about knowing the local area, brokers know things like “what kind of person likes to live here?” Is it a young and trendy area or a quiet family neigh…

> A lot of brokers work on commission that they get from the landlord.

It depends on the city. In NYC, the broker is pretty much always paid for by the person looking for an apartment, and it's quite a bit of money. I haven't looked for an apartment for 10 years, but I think it was 5-10% of the annual rent. (I imagine this gravy train is coming to its end, though. 10% was fine when your employer was paying for relocation, but in the All Remote future, this free money goes away.)

Re: I need to find an apartment

#18

Post by codewithmatt »

mattrighetti wrote: post #11
dangus wrote: post #8

I appreciate the talent and ingenuity behind this apartment hunting project. I just wonder if OP ever thought of contacting a broker? I would have done that before I wrote a single line of code. Scraping all this data is really great, but a human broker is going to know the local area and the other human nuances of apartment searching in the local area. Plus, brokers already have access to their own software that’s d…

I didn't actually, I'm trying to save as much money as possible at the moment and while a broker would be a good solution it would be a bit pricey for me. Maybe when I'm older and willing to spend money on relocating that would be a better solution for sure!

I'm not sure how Luxembourg works, but in the US the "seller" or landlord in this case pays a fee. Obviously this may be drastically different in Europe, but it's worth having a conversation with an agent/broker.

My wife is a realtor here in TX and when she is in-between home sales she helps people find rent houses and apartments. The seller pays a pre-agreed amount of 30-40% of the first months rent as a type of compensation. The buyer doesn't pay her anything at all. She is incentivized to find the right property for her client so she can get paid, and she also is better positioned to talk to the listing agent/landlord about you and the current competition among applicants. She ends up being able to save people money on application fees that would never get approved.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#20

Post by codewithmatt »

jrockway wrote: post #17
dangus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of brokers work on commission that they get from the landlord. At least where I live, you don’t really pay for a broker as a buyer/renter, but I admittedly don’t know how that works in Luxembourg. A lot of brokers specialize on ex-pats, too! To expand on my point about knowing the local area, brokers know things like “what kind of person likes to live here?” Is it a young and trendy area or a quiet family neigh…

> A lot of brokers work on commission that they get from the landlord. It depends on the city. In NYC, the broker is pretty much always paid for by the person looking for an apartment, and it's quite a bit of money. I haven't looked for an apartment for 10 years, but I think it was 5-10% of the annual rent. (I imagine this gravy train is coming to its end, though. 10% was fine when your employer was paying for reloca…

I think in NY specifically it's still structured this way. But for the US as a whole, it's much more common for it to come out of the seller's end.

Honestly here in Austin, unless you're walking into an apartment leasing office -- you're going to waste so much on rejected application fees by not utilizing an agent to rent a single family home.

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