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I need to find an apartment

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Re: I need to find an apartment

#121

Post by edmcnulty101 »

timr wrote: post #117
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…

> Is hunting for an apartment doomed to be this messy forever? It seems like an area that is ripe for disruption or a better option, but what would it take to actually solve this? I hesitate to say it, but there is already a solution to this, and it has been the one that New York has had for years: you hire an agent. A good agent will sort through all of that for you, and streamline the process to the point where you…

What kind of agent? Just a. real estate agent?

Re: I need to find an apartment

#122

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

sonicggg wrote: post #49
aqme28 wrote: post #34

I'm currently searching in Berlin and the market has become insane. Here's a response I got yesterday: "With more than 1200 prospective tenants, it was really difficult for the landlord to make a decision. Unfortunately, we have to inform you that the landlord has decided on other prospective tenants. Thank you for your understanding! "

The pandemic allowed remote work to flourish. Why are people still crowding the cities? And of all the places, specially Berlin. Not even that great of a city. A lot of my friends fled the city.

>The pandemic allowed remote work to flourish.

Because in most of Europe (Austria for me) it didn't flourish and not every job can be done remotely as not everything IT related is web development and in many companies management did not give ownership and resources to maintain remote work IT infrastructure to anyone, so everything is chaotic and crumbling to bits now that things are opening up and most people are back in the offices.

Few companies here are keeping 100% remote once the vaccine mandate came through and things started opening up this spring, and now the new standard is various hybrid work variants where you get 1-3 days per week remote and the rest in the office, or one week remote, one in the office, without any logic or arguments behind these choices, just "because management said so" and "this is how we do it here".

>Why are people still crowding the cities?

Because that's where the amenities and the networking opportunities still are. Universities, clubs, bars, music halls, swimming pools, great restaurants, bouldering halls and gyms, music and jazz bars and basically anything to do with art.

Oh, and most importantly, dating. It's way more difficult to meet someone when you live alone in the sticks VS being surrounded by people your own age sharing similar interests.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#123

Post by lupire »

ng55QPSK wrote: post #80
extesy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simple answer is rent control: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-02/berlin...

The same old lie over and over again. Rent control is limiting the profit you can make with renting out. It doesn't stop profit in the first place. And btw: new built appartments have almost free price setting.

That's the problem -- rent controls usualy apply to only a bizarre arbitrary fraction of units, distorting the market instead of controlling it.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#124

Post by colinhb »

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?

In my experience in NL makelaars (brokers) serve particular niches, and I expect they can outcompete larger firms that don’t understand the neighborhood or municipal market as well, the market segment (roughly price), the kind of buyer/renter, the kind of seller/leaser, not to mention just their access to “deal flow” in their networks unrelated to their expertise.

Think it’s all related apartments and houses not really being fungible.

ESIT: Also, more directly to GP’s experience, when I was in the market in NL I found the biggest aggregator to be very useful, which is apparently different from their experience: funda.nl

Re: I need to find an apartment

#125

Post by ClumsyPilot »

ng55QPSK wrote: post #65
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Population of Berlin has hardly changed in the past 30 years, it grows at an annual a rate of like 0.2%. How is this madness possible? Edit: There were 3.5 million residents in 1993. It is projected to reach 3.6 million residents in 2029 [1] It's got to be something to do with financial markets and foreign investment 1 - https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/204296/berlin/population

Berlin's population has grown 10% in 10 years. The 20 years before that it was stagnating or some years even shrinking.

Where are you getting this data? It was 3.48 million in 2012 and it is of 3.57 million today, from what I can see

https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/204296/berlin/population

Re: I need to find an apartment

#126

Post by brandall10 »

distrill wrote: post #27
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…

i don't share this experience at all. i've used zillow and apartments.com recently (found a place through apartments.com about a year ago and just found one through zillow a few weeks ago) and had no issues. the filter options work how you'd expect, and i wasn't put in touch with any middle men - it was either the private property owner or the apartment management company who handled the leasing directly.

Had an excellent experience finding my last two places from Zillow - one in SD and one in Denver. Truly wonderfully luxury 1 beds at below market prices from landlords who had this as their only secondary property.

Tried the same thing with NYC and things went nowhere fast.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#127

Post by klodolph »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #121
timr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is hunting for an apartment doomed to be this messy forever? It seems like an area that is ripe for disruption or a better option, but what would it take to actually solve this? I hesitate to say it, but there is already a solution to this, and it has been the one that New York has had for years: you hire an agent. A good agent will sort through all of that for you, and streamline the process to the point where you…

What kind of agent? Just a. real estate agent?

An apartment broker.

Just like when buying a house, an apartment broker works on behalf of the landlord or the tenant. They charge a fee which is a percentage of a year’s rent. It is negotiable.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#128

Post by baby »

I find the flow in the US the simplest:

1. go to craigslist

2. play with the filter

3. add keywords in the search bar like "rent control" and "-studio"

4. go to the maps page

5. bookmark the page

6. check every day

In the US/France, there's too much fragmentation and real estate agents

In China I would go to the lady selling phone cards in the street and managed to visit a lot of apartments like that.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#129

Post by s17n »

wildmanx wrote: post #87
b20000 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why did landlords take their units off the market in berlin? because renting out is no longer interesting?

Because a law called "Mietpreisbremse" makes it entirely unattractive to rent out. That's a strict regulation on how much rent you are allowed to take. And that's just the direct financial aspect. Once a tenant lives in your place, it's really hard to get rid of them. Even if they act like total scumbags, trash the place, disturb the neighbors, pay their rent late. No reasonable investor finds it attractive to build…

Land value tax solves this

Re: I need to find an apartment

#130

Post by ascar »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #88
wildmanx wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a law called "Mietpreisbremse" makes it entirely unattractive to rent out. That's a strict regulation on how much rent you are allowed to take. And that's just the direct financial aspect. Once a tenant lives in your place, it's really hard to get rid of them. Even if they act like total scumbags, trash the place, disturb the neighbors, pay their rent late. No reasonable investor finds it attractive to build…

Berlin politics also seriously discuss seizing landlords' properties [1]. It's stupid. It's illegal. But it makes the potential downside of renting out a home the value of the property. (Or the cost of defending against an illegal law.) [1] https://www.npr.org/2021/12/03/1061333538/berlin-voted-for-t...

> Berlin politics

Berlin citizens. It's a public referendum.

> seizing landlords' properties

with 3000 or more units.

> defending against an illegal law

It's not a law and it will very likely never be one as it's pretty much against the constitution.

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