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I need to find an apartment

mattrighetti.com

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Re: I need to find an apartment

#161

Post by vishnugupta »

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…

> From the agent's perspective, it's good to drive people to their company's website rather than one of the big aggregate ones

This is strange, wasn't my experience at all. Just about every house I viewed through funda was advertised by agents. And when I put up my house for sale the first thing the agent did was to publish on funda. All the agents care about is selling a house they get a hefty sum (0.3% if I remember correctly) and are totally fine advertising on funda.

As a house seeker I dealt with a bunch of agents and the experience wasn't all that bad to be honest. Mind you all this was in early 2019; from what I hear late 2020 onwards the market has gone bananas in the Netherlands and Amsterdam in particular.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#162

Post by kebman »

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 think it depends on a few factors. The culture where you're searching. The laws. And the economy. And the available services. Where I'm from the law works pretty well, and there's really only one de-facto site that most people use for selling their pad, though Facebook has tried to take over some of the competition. I don't think you can get away from the stress of viewings, but IMHO it sounds like it's a lot more difficult to search where you're situated.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#163

Post by MikePlacid »

zabzonk wrote: post #68
sl3232323 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when did housing become a right?

Since the UN was founded, and human rights were stated.

A bit earlier than that, actually:

[In 1917] the government spearheaded great changes in people’s lives, starting with housing. The Soviets nationalized private property and started the so-called “уплотнение” (housing compaction), giving rooms to working-class families in large central apartments that used to belong to [previous owners]. Note that renters were “compacted” too. This project officially laid the groundwork for the often bizarre kommunalka housing - a resilient symbol of the Soviet past. https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/331621-lenin-putin-soviet-rus...

So you are having problems looking for a 2bd apartment for a family of 3? What about one room in an apartment with a bath shared by 4 other families?

Re: I need to find an apartment

#164

Post by timr »

bobthepanda wrote: post #155
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't work in all US markets unfortunately, as I discovered recently when considering that very option you suggest. In some slower towns a few agents are willing to do this on the side as a source of income, but then in places like SF the home buying market is so hot, that it's comparatively bad ROI for agents to spend any time on most rentals. I'm curious how NYC manages to pull that off.

NYC has a broker’s fee to pay for rentals. The typical rate is somewhere between a month’s rent and 15% of annual rent. It’s quite expensive.

This isn't strictly true. Historically many do, but increasingly many don't. It's been changing. Whether you pay for your own representation is also an entirely separate question.

As someone else in this thread noted, the landlord often hires an agent because they don't want to deal with the tidal wave of crap that comes from dealing with applicants. That person gets paid, obviously, and the landlord isn't the one paying them. That's the rate you're talking about here. These people are not incentivized to provide good service to the renter, and typically don't. They suck.

Higher-end buildings often have in-house agents (again: you're paying for this, whether you realize it or not), and these are called "no fee" buildings. But an increasing number of places don't have either, and just provide access to professional renter's agents instead of listing publicly. Or they do list publicly, and barely respond to the tidal wave of yahoos, knowing that motivated renters hire an agent. YMMV.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#165

Post by dghughes »

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! "

And don't Germans traditionally prefer renting over owning? Or so I've heard (but I'm not German).

Re: I need to find an apartment

#166

Post by goodpoint »

nicoco wrote: post #103
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.

Not to mention ending militarism.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#167

Post by turtlebits »

01100011 wrote: post #156

Renting is fundamentally broken. You submit precious personal info over to a random stranger along with payment to check your credit. Last time I checked, this fee is $25-50 USD. You've now given them enough information to steal your identity. You also may need to do this multiple times if you're rejected. The person receiving this information rarely has identity protection measures in place and you receive no guaran…

A service similar to what you’re proposing called Smartmove already exists. The renter pays them for the application + credit/background/etc checks. You don’t have to handle payment or take SSNs. Unfortunately pass/fail doesn’t work due to nuance in income/credit/rental history.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#168

Post by nradov »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #144
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…

This doesn't work in all US markets unfortunately, as I discovered recently when considering that very option you suggest. In some slower towns a few agents are willing to do this on the side as a source of income, but then in places like SF the home buying market is so hot, that it's comparatively bad ROI for agents to spend any time on most rentals. I'm curious how NYC manages to pull that off.

There are a lot of licensed real estate agents in the SF Bay Area. Very few of them get the lucrative sales listings. There are plenty of extra agents with time to work for renters if they wanted to. But most renters don't seem to want that service, and most lessors aren't accustomed to working with agents.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#170

Post by grose »

mattrighetti wrote: post #107
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!

I had a similar problem that I solved with goquery and otto. You can use goquery to traverse the DOM and otto to execute the script fragment. Then just grab the data from otto's VM.

Your scraping being slow and using Chrome might be a blessing in disguise though. If you aren't careful you can get detected as a bot and banned from the site.

https://github.com/PuerkitoBio/goquery https://github.com/robertkrimen/otto

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