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We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

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Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#131

Post by tcbasche »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #85
tcbasche wrote: post #43

I’ve had this urge lately after dealing with idiotic and incompetent property rental managers to automate their entire industry away. I’m glad I’m not the only one

How would one automate away the fixing of toilets and performing routine maintenance?

I don't think you would (and that would be a terrible idea), more the 'organising' and booking of those maintenance items. I can count more than I'd like to the amount of times I've had double-handling, miscommunication and downright rude behaviour from rental managers trying to either refute that you need maintenance, call the wrong person or don't chase anything up and get things fixed.

Submit maintenance on an app and then boom someone is contacted to fix something

Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#132

Post by BoysenberryPi »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #85
tcbasche wrote: post #43

I’ve had this urge lately after dealing with idiotic and incompetent property rental managers to automate their entire industry away. I’m glad I’m not the only one

How would one automate away the fixing of toilets and performing routine maintenance?

Is this not already automated? I log into my apartments tenant portal, file a maintenance request, and tomorrow there's a dude at my door to fix my stuff.

Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#133

Post by bredren »

mshenfield wrote: post #120

Even though this begins with a pitch for empowering tenants, the customers are the landlords. The value for landlords comes at the expense of tenants in several ways. * It prevents tenants who don't meet income or other requirements from even looking at the unit. * It makes tenants liable for noting damage as soon as they view a unit to avoid it being attributed to them, a daunting task. * And it removes a face to fa…

> it removes a face to face interaction that forces some accountability on landlords who don't provide a clean/cared for unit.

I do not think face to face interactions with landlords help when the landlord knows they are providing a poorly kept property to begin with.

I’ve had a landlord that would use various manipulative techniques to get people to sign leases.

Promises of future fixes, charm, references to the difficulty of finding a place, hints toward other interest.

Landlords can not be trusted to be benevolent. They are like the pre-Uber taxi drivers.

Landlords lack accountability and provide services to people in positions of vulnerability. They take advantage of the asymmetric power differentials and do it in the name of profit.

Anything to remove this person and unify terms is advantageous.

Jerry.ai is doing this with insurance, and various startups have made attempts to do this with car dealerships. CarWoo back in the day.

Bad algorithms can be improved overnight. Greedy, careless people are here to stay.

Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#134

Post by heurisko »

joshuaissac wrote: post #90
988747 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of those things happen regardless of who formally pays the fee: one side of the transaction has a desirable good (apartment) the other side only has money to bargain with, so it's obvious from who's pocket the fee will come from. Many times the buyer would openly raise that argument in negotiations: "You know, I have all those fees to pay, can you lower the rent a bit?". It's not like sellers are completely obli…

When the person choosing the broker is the same one that pays, it creates competition on fees. The renter cannot choose to change the agent to a cheaper one. They have to deal with whatever agent the landlord has chosen. It works similarly when software is chosen by people who have to use it versus those who do not. IDEs and text editors are usually chosen by the users, so there is competition on usability between di…

In the UK we banned letting agent (broker) fees charged to the prospective tenant for exactly this reason.

Tenants can't "shop around" for a different letting agent that won't charge them £250 for a £50 credit check. Landlords can.

Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#136

Post by __sy__ »

dangerwill wrote: post #126
__sy__ wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now we have a multi-protocol hub with cellular and battery back-up. So the short answer is... nothing?

Nothing until the battery runs out. I'm just thinking of situations like Texas, the East Coast hurricane season, the West Coast fire season, etc where power cuts can last up to a week. Or what happens when GCP/AWS/Azure have a bad day and you lose connectivity with your API servers?

yeah the battery only lasts 24 hours, though I suspect we could eventually implement a low-power mode in our firmware to stretch that quite a bit. To be honest, I'm also not sure to what extend we want to over index black-swan events [1] as part of our product roadmap.

Your second point about GCP/AWS/Azure going down is really valid. When we started the company, we saw a few off-the-shelf gateways that relied on a permanent MQTT connection to function correctly, and from our Sonder experience, we knew that this was a non-starter for some of our early customers. Instead, we ended up creating our own hub and we run a ton of logic that runs entirely locally. For example, if an Airbnb reservation comes in, the hub immediately receives the door lock programming instructions even if the reservation is far out in the future. Our hub doesn't program the lock yet, but when the reservation time window arrives, the lock gets programmed by the hub irrespective of whether the internet or AWS is up/down.

[1] well at this point, it's questionable whether we should refer to, for example, wildfires as Black Swan events. But I think you'll agree that most people aren't interested in touring a new home or staying at an Airbnb when the town next door is on fire...

Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#137

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

__sy__ wrote: post #123
dempsey wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know very large REITs that use Kwikset Smart Keys. They have a dozen keys and just reset to a different of the dozen after every move out. Tens of thousands of homes and never had a problem. It’s security through obscurity. Plus locks are easy to break/bypass for someone that’s motivated to do so. It’s the casual crime of opportunity that you can guard against.

Are you referring to smart locks with unique codes or the Kwikset solution that consists of pulling out the cylinder and putting a new one in?

SmartKey is a mechanical lock that is rekeyable without removing the cylinder. You unlock with the old key, insert a tool to release the internal wafers, then insert the new key and it repositions the wafers to match the key.

Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#138

Post by xadhominemx »

maest wrote: post #87
xadhominemx wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s necessary in many markets IMO. Otherwise people would just spam applications at every apartment that satisfies their broad filters.

So charge per application, with the money going towards first month's rent, if successful.

That’s how it usually works

Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#140

Post by AnimalMuppet »

mschuster91 wrote: post #34

Landlords being able to require proof of no evictions in rent history makes sense (even though it absolutely makes life worse for people who fell on any form of hardship), but why are landlords even allowed to demand proof of no felonies?!

Because sometimes felons use their place of residence as the center of the location of their felonies? And sometimes those felonies are against nearby people? If you had an apartment complex, you wouldn't want to rent to a breaking-and-entering specialist, or even a car thief. You wouldn't want to rent to a meth manufacturer or distributor. And you wouldn't want to rent to a serial rapist.

Eventually it just becomes easier to just say "no felons" than to try to figure out whether this particular brand of felony is going to negatively impact you or your other residents.

On the other hand, felons have to live somewhere...

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