How would bankrupting these companies would unleash value, exactly?
How is mandatory data reporting linked to bankruptcy? The more information available to the market, the better and more efficient they run.
All it would do is create a race to the bottom. Athome seems to be a data aggregator of many listing sites; I can see open data on the actual apartment lister’s end being useful (ie. Apartments.com) but athome is the ones doing the aggregation, so if they had to turn the data over they just wouldn’t create that data in the first place since there would be no revenue stream for doing so.
In highly competitive markets the good apartments don't even make it to the websites that aggregate listings before someone takes them. The ones that do are either very expensive or will have 20+ people showing up the next day (sometimes the same day) for a visit. It's crazy and while this article is very neat I'm not sure a bot that scrapes listing in batch is the answer.
A long time ago I knew someone who's parents found them an excellent apartment at a great price in Boston. Great neighborhood, 2BR, nicely kept, off-street parking, you name it. Few years later they had to move since the owner was selling the place, and went on an apartment search by themselves (using an agency). Could not find anything anywhere near nice at that price point, and settled on something a lot more expen…
I don’t know the story of course, but apartments are one of the largest profit growth centers for capital firms; most metros have experienced >50% rent growth in the past decade[0], for instance. Chances are a renter will never see a rent decrease unless they downgrade in a key area (specs, amenities, location) or are moving in very short intervals.
walk around the neighborhood you're thinking of renting in, and look around for signs advertising rentals with phone numbers on them. call them with the bdrm count you're looking for, and if they know exactly what building you're talking about and units they have available, sometimes they'll give you the code to walk right in and check the place out. you can use this convo to push the rate down a bit or ask for a ren…
This. I was going to say the same: > walk around the neighborhood you're thinking of renting in...call them... It works far better in Belltown (Seattle) than the free "apartment shopper weekly" printed ones (which have glossy pictures and outrageous prices). Your entire post is spot-on. Thank You.
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…
In San Francisco, when I was looking for an apartment,, I always ended up with an apartment with the worst pictures / missing things in the description on Craigslist, because they had less interest / were cheaper. The market for rentals is never efficient and will never be! People who post to Zillow with a perfect description know they can extract more money for it.
When I moved to Sunnyvale, I found a place on Craigslist where the entire description was typed in capital letters. The landlord was indeed quite eccentric, but we got along well. 2 bed 2 bath, vaulted ceilings. There was a pool that I maybe used once. It was good for 3 years, until his sister took over the family business and evicted him! Poor guy had a lot of mental health problems, but she was the insane one...
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…
When I moved to San Francisco in 2001, there was a store front around Market and Church that was an agency with apartment listings printed out on the windows like a real estate office. They ran my credit check, made me a packet with copies of it for each landlord, and set me up with appointments to see three units, one of which I rented.
I think there was a fee in the $50 to $75 range, but it included the credit check and access to their listings.
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…
Berlin pretty much built out? The city has a huge "hole" in the center - Tempelhofer Feld. 355 hectares of land that at some point it was decided to leave untouched. Complete waste of space that could be used to build thousands of units.
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…
> Aggregators like Padmapper helped for awhile Everyone that attempts to address the housing market just winds up realizing how lucrative it is to not fix it Once they get a little data and hire some agents its just a reversion to the mean
At least OP had the full address of those apartment on that website, so he could plot them on the map. Here in Austria, most leeches, sorry, realtors, avoid putting the street in the ad to prevent you from trying to contact the property directly and bypassing their fees, so apartment hunting is even more of a headache. Still, amazing work from OP.
When I searched for my apartment, I was able to reverse engineer the home's address sometimes when the general vicinity was specified, then looking at the pictures, and comparing them with Google street view. This was a manual process however and only worked if enough outside views were available. Despite the time effort, you still spent less time on it per house than making an appointment for a viewing, getting ther…
I am looking for an apartment in eastern Europe. I was shocked to see listings with the windows covered in Microsoft Paint. I was able to find the location in some instances by finding the same property in other listings (the images were still slightly altered). This is the amateur move, what I see more often is image alteration so that the light coming through the windows makes it impossible to see what is outside. The same apartment is usually posted by 5-10 agencies, pictures and description almost identical, with different location. You get different responses depending who you call. I hope to end my suffering this year and buy something.
Kinda funny side story: I tried scraping Homes (the Japanese equivalent to this site) for a small subsection of data, basically instantly got IP banned and could not use the site consistently until I outright moved to a new location and made a new internet contract