I need to find an apartment • Hacker News Board

Re: I need to find an apartment

#101

Post by megous » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

vageli wrote: post #6

denysvitali wrote: post #3

Interesting article: I did something similar but for Zürich (finding a low-price, but good apartment there is almost impossible). I did follow a different approach though, and reverse engineered the APIs of the most common rental listing websites here. I didn't publish the code (or better said, I didn't make it public), but it's similar to yours. Instead of SQLite I used a PostGis database where I stored the apartmen…

> I didn't publish the code (or better said, I didn't make it public), but it's similar to yours. Instead of SQLite I used a PostGis database where I stored the apartments with their point to point public transport distance from my office (pre-covid search). I did it in Rust. How did you convert an address to long/lat for postgis?

Some countries publish all addresses with geolocation information as part of open data initiatives.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#102

Post by giraffe_lady » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

fennecfoxen wrote: post #37

giraffe_lady wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but this is a "the customer isn't the user" situation. The tenant wants and deserves privacy, and it's their privacy that can be compromised by the listing. The owner doesn't really have a reason to care, I don't think, and may even be incentivized in some situations to reveal information the tenants would rather they not.

What information? “This apartment exists at LOCATION and will be available for rent at DATE?” And you think the tenant is entitled to stop the world from knowing that because the tenant is residing at that location before DATE? Goodness. I should give the First Amendment a hug.

I didn't make any of those claims at all. I just pointed out that if there is a privacy issue, it's not the lister's privacy at stake.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#103

Post by nicoco » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

candiddevmike wrote: post #54

Government should provide apartments, free, in the center of the city, for anyone who needs one. Housing should be a human right. You can pay extra for a better place, but then landlords would actually have to compete for your business instead of the other way around.

Are you insane? Then what, abolish poverty, stop human exploitation, and maintain the ecosystem that allows our species to survive? You dangerous revolutionary.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#104

Post by amelius » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

Etheryte wrote: post #15

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 et…

The question, though, is: why doesn't this converge to a single monopolist agency, like in the rest of capitalism?

Re: I need to find an apartment

#105

Post by ghaff » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 6:08 PM UTC

csa wrote: post #74

pacetherace wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1:1200 is probably worse than most selective universities. I know it is not apples to apples comparison but it’s the first thing that came to my mind.

> 1:1200 is probably worse than most selective universities By two orders of magnitude. Ivies range from about 1:20 to 1:10 in non-covid times.

It's sort of a meaningless comparison though. A huge amount of self-selection goes on before an application to an elite university is even filled out.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#106

Post by Jeaye » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 6:08 PM UTC

I did a similar thing to help me land an apartment 5 years ago, using Clojure: https://blog.jeaye.com/2017/02/28/clojure-apartments/

However, my approach didn't include these map visuals; that's a great idea and a nice execution!

Re: I need to find an apartment

#107

Post by mattrighetti » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

johnchristopher wrote: post #73

Why not downloading the html page and scrape that file instead of using puppeteer (which uses a headless chrome I think) ?

I didn't have an easy solution to grab that JSON variable directly by scraping HTML. So I chose Puppeteer because it simulates the browser (yes, chrome) and therefore I could just get the JSON object with a bunch of lines as if I was using the browser's console. It's slow, but I think it's the most straightforward way to do it. But if you could elaborate more on your approach I will definitely try that out!

Re: I need to find an apartment

#108

Post by lupire » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

vmception wrote: post #36

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…

> Aggregators like Padmapper helped for awhile Everyone that attempts to address the housing market just winds up realizing how lucrative it is to not fix it Once they get a little data and hire some agents its just a reversion to the mean

How is it lucrative?

Would a pad mapper intentionally make some listings bad in order to reduce effective supply?

Re: I need to find an apartment

#109

Post by asiachick » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

I wish all apartment listing included a floor plan. I could easily reject 90% of apartments without having to go personally look at it if they's show me a floor plan. It's a little surprising to me they aren't more common.

In Japan they're often missing other things like lots of pictures but at least the number 1 requirement to list an apartment is a floor plan.

https://suumo.jp/jj/chintai/ichiran/FR301FC001/?ar=030&bs=04...

I wish Craigslist would require one or somehow strongly suggest that the person offering the apartment would get better matches and have less of their own time wasted if they'd add a floor plan.

I also wish they'd add some examples of good and bad pictures. So many people take pictures with their phone and the field of view is so small and lighting so bad the pictures are basically useless. I'm not saying they need pro-equipment but my guess is there are at least some guidelines that would be helpful. How about no portrait mode pics as just one example that would likely lead to more useful images.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#110

Post by scythe » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 6:11 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #104

Etheryte wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 et…

The question, though, is: why doesn't this converge to a single monopolist agency, like in the rest of capitalism?

Guess who spends the most money on lobbying?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/257344/top-lobbying-spen...