Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I need to find an apartment

mattrighetti.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 319 posts

Re: I need to find an apartment

#231

Post by asdff »

baby wrote: post #128

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.

If you log in with craigslist you can save the search instead of having to bookmark and manually recheck.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#232

Post by TheGigaChad »

ncmncm wrote: post #212
jokethrowaway wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's a mostly unregulated market. A new competitor has minimal government regulations to satisfy in order to start and everyone and their dog can start doing this job (and believe me, I've met some interesting agents when looking for the best deals both looking for rent and renting out my property). The big centralised agencies don't really have a way to stop smaller agents offering cheaper services and servi…

This does not explain anything. The natural end condition of an unregulated market is a monopoly. That is why we need regulation. So, something is operating to provide implicit regulation. In this case it seems like chaos serves that role. Monopoly relies on a self-ordering property common to most market conditions.

No post body was provided.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#233

Post by rootusrootus »

ransom1538 wrote: post #210
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…

Sounds like you should become an agent.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#234

Post by Dma54rhs »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #191
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm still not sure renters really have a reasonable expectation of privacy when the place they are living in is listed for rent or sale by someone else In some EU countries they do. The landlord need to ask permission to have visitors at your place and the tenant has the right to refuse.

The tenant has the right to refuse to have the home shown when they are moving out and the landlord is trying to find new tenants? How about maintenance workers fixing appliances or something? That seems pretty hard to believe. Are you sure the tenant isn't just allowed to refuse "a time slot" but also must offer alternatives?

Yes tenants have to approve those visits, hence its good when both parties have good relationship. Renters tend to have strong protections in Europe.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#236

Post by abliefern »

TillE wrote: post #47
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! "

You pretty much have to buy an apartment in Berlin, that's been the case for the past 10 years or so. Landlords took them off the market and put them up for sale. You might still be able to find something decent for around 100k euro, I'm not sure.

In Berlin, 100k will get you less than 20m2 somewhere on the outskirts of Spandau

Re: I need to find an apartment

#237

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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.

Rent control simply locks in a set of winners when it is implemented (which for the most part stays static and doesn’t apply to new demand), the government then has to promise that rent control won’t be implemented on new supply so developers, businesses, and private landlords just don’t give up on the rental market completely.

I don’t see rent control as very useful, but I doubt it is very relevant to the current housing shortages throughout the cities that have it either (given that the same problems apply to cites that don’t have it).

Re: I need to find an apartment

#238

Post by seanmcdirmid »

noahtallen wrote: post #67
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! "

Portland, OR solved that problem by making landlords accept the first offer which matches the stated requirements. Which leads to some… interesting incentives :p

Seattle has this also. It leads to very stringent requirements, with little room for flexibility, you also have to the first qualified person to respond to an ad. It has also led to a lot of rental supply not being advertised, relying on personal connections to find tenants instead.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#239

Post by seanmcdirmid »

denysvitali wrote: post #3

Interesting article: I did something similar but for Zürich (finding a low-price, but good apartment there is almost impossible). I did follow a different approach though, and reverse engineered the APIs of the most common rental listing websites here. I didn't publish the code (or better said, I didn't make it public), but it's similar to yours. Instead of SQLite I used a PostGis database where I stored the apartmen…

If Zurich is anything like Lausanne, it has been that way for awhile. I had a heck of a time finding a place in 2005, the property management companies and landlords were all very picky even if rents were high as well.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#240

Post by bluquark »

dflock wrote: post #79
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.

I would love some city or government to try this experiment!

The closest to it today is Finland's "Housing First" policy: https://ysaatio.fi/en/housing-first-finland

But even in Finland, housing is only sometimes free and then on a net basis (rent can be canceled out by a means-tested housing benefit).

Post reply on HN