Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your own link says that NYC landlords are required to mitigate damages by seeking a new tenant.
Yes, as of July 2019, which is not the context of the OP discussion and why I said "at the time..."
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We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
391–400 of 593 posts
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
>- It is now cheaper for the average person to get a ride to an airport/bar than it was before. Is it? Or are venture capitalists just footing the bill? Whatever model of "price" you use needs to take into account the fact that not only are Uber and Lyft lighting enormous piles of Saudi money on fire to "gain marketshare" but that the actual drivers are being paid peanuts. This isn't pure win, it's more like Nestle h…
What market did they destroy? The money went directly to US engineers and US drivers. The US should be blessed that Saudi is so bad with its money and so willing to subsidize Americans. It destroyed the money of people who had bought up medallions. That's it. Having medallions was not a long term solution when the city can now charge rideshare services for miles/minutes/rides on the road without any hard cap for poli…
> What market did they destroy? The money went directly to US engineers and US drivers.
The financially-sustainable transportation market. Companies without endless amounts of capital that actually have to break even or make a profit to keep the lights on.
It's not just the medallions, they're literally selling the service itself at below-cost in many places and have been for years.
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does it degrade? It was exactly what I was saying happens and someone exactly said the comment. It's 100% validating. In fact it is your lazy finger wagging comment that degrades this community.
Your comments all presuppose the existing broker solution is superior and people just haven't found the problems with Caretaker yet (and some vague and unfounded speculation about a future price increase). Consider that perhaps Caretaker is taking customers from brokers because they actually provide a better and/or cheaper service. Maybe the positive comments aren't a short term buzz but instead good reviews of a goo…
No my comments do not presuppose the broker solution being better.
My comments describe the typical playbook for VC funded companies going into a market place with a well hated incumbent.
The cheaper services that Caretaker currently provide are subsidized by private capital and only will provide a positive return for that private capital once they have a dominant position in the market at which point they have the power dynamic to raise prices.
My comments look to the longer term future and take a quick look at whats getting replaced. There is no supposition that the broker solution is better - more that the Caretaker solution has a predictable playbook in which we will see if the long term solution is indeed better.
The value that was accrued across broker (As hated as they may be) provide some jobs, the value in caretaker accrues across some staff but mostly rolls up to the investors - providing it is a successful outcome.
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#394Caretaker: 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 =…
> It's like the same idea of Uber and Lyft. Less human involvement = better world /S.
It's interesting how everyone conveniently forgot about the medallion system Uber and Lyft disrupted.
Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an extremely volatile asset and not very liquid).
The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car, calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out of the game at anytime, and they know exactly how much they are going to get for the car they have should they sell it.
And I'm not even touching the usual pain points and often discriminatory practices of medallion drivers (refusing card payments, refusing rides to non-white passengers and to non-white neighborhoods...).
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#395Caretaker: 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 =…
> Less human involvement = better world /S ...why sarcasm? The entire premise of technological and economic progress is outsourcing repetitive mind-numbing tasks (whether farming or showing apartments) to automation. You're just describing regular old beneficial economic progress -- the reason why we're not all still farmers. And if Caretaker becomes a massive success, then competitors will appear, which is the basic…
If they still end up charging 15% for doing the same thing automated there hasn't been any meaningful economic progress. There's just concentration of wealth.
If they can cut that 15% to 1% and this field ends up being competitive then sure.
But, they're probably going for a monopoly play here.
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
Landlords can't pass costs to tenants. The rental market is completely supply inelastic. Landlords are already charging the maximum renters are willing to pay.
Do you mean at this moment in time because of Covid, or in general? Because in general, there have been easy-to-find examples in the past couple decades of rents going up 5-10% every year for folks in certain places with aggressive landlords. Were they willing to pay 5-10% more suddenly in year n+1, or were they charged less than the maximum they would've been willing to pay in year n?
Demand has been increasing by 5-10% a year in highly desirable areas. Obviously different people are willing to pay different amounts, but everyone wants to pay as little as possible. As more people want to move in the least wealthy are pushed out and prices increase. After all, rental price is the highest price landlords can take in order to rent out all their units.
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#397Caretaker: 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…
Uber and Lyft haven't yet reached profitability. They either have to raise prices, lower costs or expand cost effectively.
Their full impact is not yet decided
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
serious Q. how in the world would any credit agency know what day you are paying the rent? In the US, I don't believe any credit agency has insight into my personal bank accounts re size (I think?) or when things are paid to whom they are paid or the like (pretty sure about this). they know about my debts, but unless the landlord puts me into collection, I ca't imagine a reason for my rent appearing on the report (it…
Credit agencies can 100% know when you pay you rent as the receiver can send this information to them. Credit cards also say when you pay so they can keep track of when you're delinquent or late for payments.
Credit agencies - at least in the US - really don't know when you pay the rent, though, unless the landlord reports this. Same for payments: This is a big part of the reason you cannot simply live within your means [1] and have good credit later in life.
You won't.
Many companies - utilities, landlords, hospitals, and so on - simply won't report anything unless it is negative. The negatives are usually sending something to in-house collections, a collection agency, or filing a civil suit to get the money.
Loans, in general, will report. This includes credit cards. Some of the buy here/pay here places won't report, though, so you get no help on your credit.
[1] What I mean by "live within your means" is to simply do things like pay cash for a used car, rent an affordable place, and simply pay your bills on time.
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing until the battery runs out. I'm just thinking of situations like Texas, the East Coast hurricane season, the West Coast fire season, etc where power cuts can last up to a week. Or what happens when GCP/AWS/Azure have a bad day and you lose connectivity with your API servers?
yeah the battery only lasts 24 hours, though I suspect we could eventually implement a low-power mode in our firmware to stretch that quite a bit. To be honest, I'm also not sure to what extend we want to over index black-swan events [1] as part of our product roadmap. Your second point about GCP/AWS/Azure going down is really valid. When we started the company, we saw a few off-the-shelf gateways that relied on a pe…
24 hour power outages are not a black swan event anywhere in the world.
Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
serious Q. how in the world would any credit agency know what day you are paying the rent? In the US, I don't believe any credit agency has insight into my personal bank accounts re size (I think?) or when things are paid to whom they are paid or the like (pretty sure about this). they know about my debts, but unless the landlord puts me into collection, I ca't imagine a reason for my rent appearing on the report (it…
OP here - Estate agent asked for 6 months bank statements, which I assume was requested by the referencing agency. I don't think is common practise in the U.K, but I asked around and lots of people told me it is more common that the larger agencies ask for it, plus it was for an apartment in a very competitive development so I feel like it might have been a forcing function to reduce the amount of applicants but that…
Why not ask the bank to confirm that you make enough, without revealing how much you make and your whole spending history?