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We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
241–250 of 593 posts
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#242Caretaker: The redfin of brokers. Take all the value for themselves freeze out the brokers (who provide a service but are universally disdained). Ride that wave of positive news for a couples years. Eventually everyone will hate the fraction of the market Caretaker has as they raise prices to make investors happy and people realize there are problems. It's like the same idea of Uber and Lyft. Less human involvement =…
as a student in boston where brokers take 1 month rent for doing exactly *nothing*, i welcome the idea of automating away these leaches. edit: fb marketplace might get the brokers first, most of my friends found their places via landlords posting there
> as a student in boston where brokers take 1 month rent for doing exactly nothing
At least in California, the broker’s fee is an expense of the landlord that is not directly passed on to the tenant moving in. If the cost is passed on, it’s hidden in the cost of rent.
Also, the landlord can claw back part of the fee if the tenant moves out before one year. So, it makes more sense as a landlord expense.
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uber and Lyft are 100% a win though. - It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to an airport/bar than it was before. It is safer, more predictable with timing, and more predictable with pricing. - Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used to/or do today. There are also way more job openings in this than there used to be, with less friction to get involved. The world is not a zero sum ga…
Neither of these things is true in NYC: cabs charge a fixed rate to the area airports (Uber is at least twice that rate), and hack drivers have historically made reasonable money. Most of them have lost that stability, as well as (in some instances) their life savings due to the medallion crash.
Investing in medallions (as investing in anything) is a risk.
Cab drivers have lost job stability, but others have benefitted.
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
Super rampant here in CA with Craigslist. Scammer will post a rental ad for a house that is currently for sale in Zillow. You know it's a scam pretty easily, but not everyone does. If someone other than Craigslist can get in this market and do a better job, one that verifies the Lister owns the property, and there is no funny business about who gets the property, that would be excellent.
I ran into this yesterday. It wasn't entirely clear it was a scam, well to me, at first. The first clue was "sorry, no in house viewing, we had son and 2 friends die from COVID, please understand". Yes, that's a big red flag but sounded like a legit excuse to me. But, at least it got me suspicious. Next was in their email they claimed to be working for somecompany.com but their email address was soomecompany.com. Fin…
In the UK, you can look up the owner of a property. You pay £4 though.
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Brokers taking money from renters is ridiculous and should be done away with. Landlords hiring brokers to deal with vetting and showing an apartment and all those logistics seems pretty reasonable and up to the landlord if they feel it’s worth the value.
Spoiler: the landlord is just passing that cost to the tenant. It's like in Canada where tenants can hire a broker for "free" to find a rental. However the broker just collects 1 month rent from the landlord. Do you think the landlord just absorbs the cost? No, the quoted rent was just 8.4% higher when the broker mentioned he was a broker.
So the market clearing price is $1084 but the landlord rents it out for $1000? Why is he leaving the other $84 on the table when dealing with non-broker applicants?
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is NOT cheaper in SF. 2 miles costs at least $20 and can be as high as $40. I don't think I've been anywhere in the world where prices are that high for taxis and there are plenty of places in the world where taxis are plentiful. I'm happy the services exist but they are not cheap, at least not here.
I’ve never had a non-surge Uber/Lyft exceed the equivalent Flywheel/street-hail in SF. I occasionally used to try these services (I have thousands of rides so this used to be relevant). Lyft/Uber are way better.
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Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uber and Lyft are 100% a win though. - It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to an airport/bar than it was before. It is safer, more predictable with timing, and more predictable with pricing. - Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used to/or do today. There are also way more job openings in this than there used to be, with less friction to get involved. The world is not a zero sum ga…
Will Uber and Lift continue to be a win when the VCs start wanting to see some of their money back? Or will the prices start rising back to the old taxi rates, then past?
We're talking about public companies. You can safely use the term investors, the term "VC" is irrelevant, except for drama.
Now that we're talking about public companies, there are a lot of them. Any concern about price gouging you might have should extend to all these companies.
If not, why not?
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#248Caretaker: The redfin of brokers. Take all the value for themselves freeze out the brokers (who provide a service but are universally disdained). Ride that wave of positive news for a couples years. Eventually everyone will hate the fraction of the market Caretaker has as they raise prices to make investors happy and people realize there are problems. It's like the same idea of Uber and Lyft. Less human involvement =…
Uber and Lyft are 100% a win though. - It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to an airport/bar than it was before. It is safer, more predictable with timing, and more predictable with pricing. - Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used to/or do today. There are also way more job openings in this than there used to be, with less friction to get involved. The world is not a zero sum ga…
> It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to an airport/bar than it was before.
On average, in certain locations. In others, not so much. And let's not forget surge pricing. Or people living, or wanting to get to a place, along low-profit routes. Or people with disabilities.
> more predictable with pricing
Depends. Regular taxis tended to cost a bit more, but had much lower variance.
> Uber drivers make more money today than taxi drivers used to/or do today.
That seems implausible at best.
> There are also way more job openings in this than there used to be
These aren't jobs, though. They're gigs. And highly unpredictable ones, wrt. your take-home pay.
> The world is not a zero sum game. Technology made this a win-win long-term
Absolutely true.
The problem isn't technology, it's businesses - particularly businesses that purposefully play a negative-sum game, where the losing side is society at large. Externalizing risk, costs, performing regulatory arbitrage. Making owners much better off, customers a bit better off, at the cost of making everyone else slightly worse off. And much like with greenhouse emissions - a bit here, a bit there, barely measurable puff, up until it adds up to a global crisis - these companies are killing civilized society, one VC-subsidized shiny app at a time.
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much is the technology around this mentioned in the lease agreement? My current complex specified that I had to supply internet and some other things for their smart hub service, although that turned out to not be the case (it's not on my network and works), but it was really weird to have that clause but it not match reality because I was effectively signing a document saying I was responsible for it.
is this with SmartRent? My hunch is that they're trying to lower their cellular data costs by having you connect their units to wifi. I had no heard of this being surfaced as a lease-agreement clause though. Fwiw, we haven't run into cases yet where landlords want to leave our hub inside a unit once it has been rented out. I think there are pros/cons to it from a security/privacy standpoint. It can also be very conve…
Yeah, SmartRent
Here's the wording if you're interested:
https://i.imgur.com/qF22wG9.jpg
Plus even though it says "If you elect to purchase..." half-way down, I basically had no option but to walk away from the lease entirely. They wouldn't remove them, turn them off and replace with a physical lock, or anything else.
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Neither of these things is true in NYC: cabs charge a fixed rate to the area airports (Uber is at least twice that rate), and hack drivers have historically made reasonable money. Most of them have lost that stability, as well as (in some instances) their life savings due to the medallion crash.
Investing in medallions (as investing in anything) is a risk. Cab drivers have lost job stability, but others have benefitted.
Sure. But this is a different claim from the OP’s. Nobody is entitled to returns on investments, but the claim that ridershare apps are either affordable or good for cabbies is farcical in NYC, at the minimum.