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Occupry your next lease to negotiate a better deal

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Re: Occupry your next lease to negotiate a better deal

#21

Post by kube-system »

epidemiology wrote: post #15

You'll get a lot of haters from the petite bourgeoisie tech landlord crowd here but this is a good idea. The more tools to help renters negotiate against the countless predatory landlords the better. Even better would be ways to report or put their malfeasance on public record. $9 is too expensive though.

I think the subset of landlords that will negotiate, and the ones that you need AI to help you with, are pretty small in overlap.

There are typically two experiences in negotiation with landlords, at least in the US:

* You rent from a small time landlord, where you're talking to the guy who owns the property. They'll negotiate if you talk to them like a human being. (and if the rental market is not very hot in that area)

* You rent from MegaCorp. The leasing agent was hired off of indeed.com last week and has zero power to negotiate and will likely tell you "sorry the lease and prices are set by corporate"

Re: Occupry your next lease to negotiate a better deal

#22

Post by gaudystead »

swyx wrote: post #14
do_not_redeem wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't shoo the messenger.

honestly there should be a hall of fame award for wittiest hn comment and this would be up there

A bash.org (RIP) equivalent for HN could be pretty fun to peruse! I'd be curious what ends up making it to the leaderboard.

Re: Occupry your next lease to negotiate a better deal

#23

Post by keiferski »

This is great. In my experience the single biggest thing that allows landlords to take advantage of tenants is the inaccessibility of real estate law. Anything that makes contract terms more easily understandable is a win, as far as I’m concerned.

Linking to a comment I made about dealing with this:

…one time a landlord didn't return the security deposit. I called him, messaged him, left notes in his mailbox. No reply. One month, two months went by. So, I looked up the relevant legal code, found the part that said "landlords have 30 days to return the security deposit with any deductions listed. Failure to do so results in the landlord owing the tenant double the original amount with no deductions." I printed that out, highlighted the relevant section, and mailed him a letter saying that he can return the original deposit amount to me immediately, or I will file at the local court and he'll owe me double. I got a check in the mail two days later.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35760541

Having an app point this statue out when signing a contract would be great.

Re: Occupry your next lease to negotiate a better deal

#25

Post by whalesalad »

Great idea. I think that the marketing page is too tech-y. It's got way too many details, uses terms like agents etc. The average joe doesn't know or care what an ai agent is, and it's not gonna help sell your product.

I would focus less on verbose feature lists and pivot to some real world examples reflecting the capabilities of the tool. This person saved $150/mo, this person was able to keep their pet, etc.

Best thing you could do is ditch the enter your email blob and instead allow a user to upload their PDF/doc lease and then give them a teaser/sample of what they have in store if they proceed. "we found 3 issues with your lease, 2 laws being broken, 1 fee that is illegal, etc"

Re: Occupry your next lease to negotiate a better deal

#26

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Carrok wrote: post #24

This is just adorable. To think that prospective renters have any negotiating power at all when the landlord typically (in my area anyway) receives triple digit numbers of applications.

> to think that prospective renters have any negotiating power at all when the landlord typically (in my area anyway) receives triple digit numbers of applications

For new-lease negotiation, you're right. For renewal, in my experience, New York City landlords happily made small edits if given a good reason. (While the larger companies usually can't change their boilerplate documents, they're almost always fine adding a rider.)

Re: Occupry your next lease to negotiate a better deal

#27

Post by neilv »

ziddoap wrote: post #13

Any time an AI product is advertised with something like "Legal Research Agents", a shiver goes up my spine. I see the testimonials (though, I don't put much faith in "Jane Doe" and "Mike Smith" testimonials), however I'm pretty sure in my area anyone who attempts to negotiate (especially based on an AI-built argument) will be told to pound sand. It's not a great market for renters here. Even blatantly illegal clause…

> (though, I don't put much faith in "Jane Doe" and "Mike Smith" testimonials)

If I got a great testimonial, and the person's name was Jane Doe, I would be sad, because people who read it would think I was a liar.

Re: Occupry your next lease to negotiate a better deal

#28

Post by Der_Einzige »

Carrok wrote: post #24

This is just adorable. To think that prospective renters have any negotiating power at all when the landlord typically (in my area anyway) receives triple digit numbers of applications.

Are you kidding me? Most laws in liberal cities where this might be true are so tenant skewed that I downright don't want the risk of them doing the "squat and take 6+ months to be evicted but not before trashing the place" routine. No thank you. I'll be a landlord in some red state where I can rely on the power of rich capitalists to make sure that squatters spend their time in jail/prison instead of moving onto yet another owner to fleece.

That's just adorable - to think that landlords have power in a place like Seattle or Portland or SF.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LoveForLandchads/

Re: Occupry your next lease to negotiate a better deal

#29

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #28
Carrok wrote: post #24

This is just adorable. To think that prospective renters have any negotiating power at all when the landlord typically (in my area anyway) receives triple digit numbers of applications.

Are you kidding me? Most laws in liberal cities where this might be true are so tenant skewed that I downright don't want the risk of them doing the "squat and take 6+ months to be evicted but not before trashing the place" routine. No thank you. I'll be a landlord in some red state where I can rely on the power of rich capitalists to make sure that squatters spend their time in jail/prison instead of moving onto yet…

Most tenants negotiating renewal aren't going to squat. The leverage a renewing tenant has is the information asymmetry in the new-tenant market (landlord might sub out an on-time rent payer for a squatter) and friction of establishing a new lease. That's preserved in red states and blue.

Re: Occupry your next lease to negotiate a better deal

#30

Post by kube-system »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #28
Carrok wrote: post #24

This is just adorable. To think that prospective renters have any negotiating power at all when the landlord typically (in my area anyway) receives triple digit numbers of applications.

Are you kidding me? Most laws in liberal cities where this might be true are so tenant skewed that I downright don't want the risk of them doing the "squat and take 6+ months to be evicted but not before trashing the place" routine. No thank you. I'll be a landlord in some red state where I can rely on the power of rich capitalists to make sure that squatters spend their time in jail/prison instead of moving onto yet…

You both are talking about two different types of power. You're talking about tenancy rights, the parent was talking about contract negotiation power. In many big cities, tenants have a good number of rights after they've signed a contract and become a tenant. But they still have little power to negotiate the contract before they have become one.
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