I need to find an apartment • Hacker News Board

Re: I need to find an apartment

#201

Post by mosseater » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 8:31 PM UTC

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 used to work at a startup that aggregated apartment listings. Long gone now, we couldn't compete with Zillow or Apartments.com. But what we were doing is just aggregating all of the rental websites we could possibly scrape into one interface.

It was hard. There are so many scams out there. If you are not hand curating listings, you have to rely on somewhat novel approaches to filter out all the bad data. For example, any mention of 'Jesus' or 'God' automatically blocked the listing. Sure there might have been legitamate listings, but anytime I would go in and check 99% of the time it was a scam. You also have scams of people listing units they don't own or have any relation too. They ask for a security deposit up front and just pocket it, leaving the new tenant to have an awkward conversation with the real resident.

Data is often unformatted too. Scraping out bedrooms and bathrooms can even be a challenge on websites like craigslist where the listing is just one big paragraph. (Not anymore, craigslist has come a long way, but that's how it was 10 years ago). Often times you had to just search for the closest number around the word "bed" or "bath". Don't even think about getting features like "driveway" or "laundry" out of them.

In the end, we ended up utilizing some pretty intense ETL pipelines to collate historical data, census information, property assessment data, and other things to try to get a more accurate picture on our listings.

But that didn't win out. What won out are the sites like Apartments.com or Zillow, where legitimate property owners can post their listings in a formatted searchable way. We could scrape them and post the same listings on our site, but at that point we were just pushing our customers to another platform that honestly worked better than our own.

We couldn't have the most up to date data, that was determined by how fast we could go back to scrape a listing. And often times we were knee deep in a battle to avoid being blocked by these companies. Often times, after we had exhausted our proxies, the only thing left to use was Tor.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#202

Post by lotsofpulp » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 8:32 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #52

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! "

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

Number of households would be the relevant measure here, not population.

Population can stay the same, but number of single people wanting to live alone means less people per dwelling, which means more demand.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#203

Post by sofixa » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 8:40 PM UTC

traceroute66 wrote: post #100

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.

> Government should provide apartments, free, in the center of the city, for anyone who needs one. During COVID lockdowns I watched lots of international TV drama series on Netflix. One of those "random things I learnt on Netflix" was that they (sort of) offer this in the UAE if you've lived & worked there for 10+ years.[1] Its basically means-tested housing. So they offer anything from interest-free 25 year loans to…

The UAE are in a uniquely blessed situation where they have a small population, not a lot of land, and a ton of valuable resources. Not every country could pull this off without significantly reworking how it's tax/budget/administration work.

That being said, there's subsidised, including to 100%, housing in France too. And cities are legally required to build affordable housing for those schemes, so it's not "it exists on paper, but nothing has been built in decades so nobody can get in".

Re: I need to find an apartment

#204

Post by wildmanx » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 8:41 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #171

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…

Your post is bordering on propaganda. First of all: the problem at the core is that Berlin is pretty much built out, there is not much space any more to expand to. Yes, skyscrapers could be a solution, but everyone seriously thinking about this gets invited to look at Frankfurt am Main and then forget about the idea because that city is simply hideous. Skyscrapers are very unwelcome in Germany because of that example…

> Your post is bordering on propaganda.

Please don't. That's not how a civilized debate works.

> First of all: the problem at the core is that Berlin is pretty much built out

Sorry, when comparing to other cities world-wide, that's hard to buy. Places like San Francisco, ok, maybe. Ocean in 3 of 4 directions. Vancouver, ok, maybe. Mountains on 2 sides, ocean on one side, border to US on one side. But Berlin? It's all flat, fields and tree plantations ("forest") all around. Even just adding a floor or two here and there would be fine. There are many areas that could get quite some more density with 5-6 floor houses. But then NIMBY hits. Easier to be angry at the "rich landlords".

> Second: that law was enacted because people were fed up with rents going up all the time

I'm trying to tell you that that's not solving the problem. High rents are just a symptom. The root cause is a mismatch of supply and demand. It's as if you are trying to legislate away gravity. That won't work in the long run. Either you need to increase supply or decrease demand. I can see that you argue that rural areas should be strengthened, but I fail to see how that would suffice. People want to live in Berlin.

> Third: People were especially pissed off about the large landlords (Vonovia etc.) which bought their stock at fire-sale prices

The people should be pissed off at the politicians that sold them the stock. It was rational to buy it. Selling out was not. And that wasn't just CDU. Even the SPD+Linke senate did similar things later on. Yet, everybody gets reelected all the time. (Not defending CDU here, they are just as guilty.)

Re: I need to find an apartment

#205

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 8:54 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: I need to find an apartment

#206

Post by unilynx » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 9:00 PM UTC

vishnugupta wrote: post #161

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…

> 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 remembe…

Having just (almost) sold a house in NL, the agent explained that the ordering currently was:

- paid searches (even at other agents)

- unpaid searches at their own agency

- social media

- agency website

- funda

each step would be on the next day, so if you're only watching funda, you're already four days behind

Re: I need to find an apartment

#207

Post by asoneth » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 9:01 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #132

closeparen wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior to the automobile era, we were all pedestrians. A small town was a town you could walk the length of. Europe is dotted with old villages denser than contemporary North American cities.

While true, I suspect most of the people who are looking for walkability want something more than a small town with a pub, a small market, and maybe a couple other stores/cafes/etc. I've stayed in many of those small towns and they can be very pleasant--but there's not a whole lot within easy walking distance.

My partner and I were looking for a walkable urban neighborhood but ultimately ended up in a small town with a pub, market, cafe, store... and a train to the big city.

Couldn't be happier, but I wouldn't recommend it to someone who is single.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#208

Post by neutronicus » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

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…

Where I live (Baltimore) a fair amount of the rental market still works by calling a number on a for rent sign in a window

Re: I need to find an apartment

#209

Post by ghaff » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

asoneth wrote: post #207

ghaff wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, I suspect most of the people who are looking for walkability want something more than a small town with a pub, a small market, and maybe a couple other stores/cafes/etc. I've stayed in many of those small towns and they can be very pleasant--but there's not a whole lot within easy walking distance.

My partner and I were looking for a walkable urban neighborhood but ultimately ended up in a small town with a pub, market, cafe, store... and a train to the big city. Couldn't be happier, but I wouldn't recommend it to someone who is single.

Depending upon circumstances, there's certainly something to be said for spending money/effort to go into a city now and then rather than spending an ongoing premium for living there day to day which may even have certain negatives.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#210

Post by ransom1538 » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

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…

If you are in a hard market (SF) I would highly recommend stalking. Get a list of buildings you truly like. In SF I had like 10 I would kill to get into. When your about 1-2 months from your lease expiring, start stalking hard: call the managers, talk to people walking into the building, talk to the mail man - anything. Nice SF places rarely have openings. "Oh Mrs. Baskin passed away - we have will have a new listing in about a month". On it, I have my cashiers check, no site needed, my credit report printed, 4 references in hand, I even help the apartment manager carry in her groceries - and I don't mind hearing her stories. There are also a few families that own 20 or so buildings - once you get on their "good list" - you are in.

The places you get are amazing. Clear views of the SF harbor, tucked away in PacHeights, full parking, cheaper rent etc. After doing this for 15 years I knew all the managers of those 10 buildings by name. My friends that "wing it" get sooo screwed. They go through listings, trying to piece if it is a nice place, always getting their initial deposit stolen, application fees swiped, going to open apartments 20 people deep, dealing with large corporate landlords, on and on. Make friends!