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YouGotListings (YC W11) looks to provide the best tools for real estate

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Re: YouGotListings (YC W11) looks to provide the best tools for real estate

#41

Post by rmc »

patio11 wrote: post #32
shawnee_ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many sites and nothing centralized has really taken off. Even when you boil it down to one city. Wrong. There IS something centralized: it's called the Multiple Listing Service, and ONLY Brokers and Realtors have "access" to it. They are salespeople, and salespeople compete only with each other. That 6 percent commission is the unwavering aspect of their model -- they built it to ensure that it always ge…

This comment would be better if you dialed down the invective a few notches. As it is I think your passion gets in the way of seeing reality as it actually is: home ownership remains an unattainable pipe dream for most people This is objectively untrue for any sensible definition of "most": 67.4% of inhabited housing units in the US are inhabited by the owner. Is home ownership going down? No, by any sensible measure…

home ownership remains an unattainable pipe dream for most people

This is objectively untrue for any sensible definition of "most": 67.4% of inhabited housing units in the US are inhabited by the owner.

Pedantically, "Most homes are occupied by their owner" is not the same as "Most people own their home"

Re: YouGotListings (YC W11) looks to provide the best tools for real estate

#42

Post by notahacker »

jetaries wrote: post #40
pg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me try again. Suppose I decide to rent out my house. The price I can get for it depends on how much people like it compared to other houses that are available. How is the amount of rent that I can get being gamed upward, in a way that it isn't if, for example, I decide to sell my car? (Unless you believe that used car prices are also inflated across the board.)

The power the brokers have over landlords' is very limited, even in hot rental markets like Boston and NYC. The landlords set the price, and the brokers try to rent them (first hand experience). Unlike sales, typically, there is no exclusivity in rentals, it's first come first serve. Whoever rents the apartments get the prize. Which creates tremendous competition among brokers. It is in the brokers' best interest tha…

I agree with your point about competition, and I also believe that a broker/agent with a sufficiently large list of property can add value to a search process (they ought to be better at identifying properties that fit your requirements than a couple of grainy photos and a list of bullet points, and competition induces them to show you the most suitable properties first).

Isn't the problem with Craigslist simply spam? The property for rent listings on Gumtree (UK equivalent of Craigslist which is very useful for finding flatshares which don't involve intermediaries) are rendered unusable by spam for fake properties put in place by letting agents who will then subsequently offer you something more expensive and less appealing that actually is on the market. Essentially the agents collecting lists of tenants with multiple fake properties crowd out anyone trying to directly list real properties.

Re: YouGotListings (YC W11) looks to provide the best tools for real estate

#43

Post by tptacek »

defen wrote: post #39
patio11 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment would be better if you dialed down the invective a few notches. As it is I think your passion gets in the way of seeing reality as it actually is: home ownership remains an unattainable pipe dream for most people This is objectively untrue for any sensible definition of "most": 67.4% of inhabited housing units in the US are inhabited by the owner. Is home ownership going down? No, by any sensible measure…

> This is objectively untrue for any sensible definition of "most": 67.4% of inhabited housing units in the US are inhabited by the owner. Are you sure that 67.4% of inhabited housing units in the US are actually inhabited by the owner? If I take out a 30 year loan on a house and then move in, the bank still owns that property. I would expect the number to be significantly lower than 67.4% when you factor in rentals…

The bank does not own your mortgaged house. They have a claim on it when it comes time to liquidate. It's easy to see that the homeowner "owns" the house: they can rent it to anyone else at any rate, raising rates as the market changes; the bank is stuck with the terms of the 30 year mortgage.

Re: YouGotListings (YC W11) looks to provide the best tools for real estate

#44

Post by ssharp »

shawnee_ wrote: post #22
cletus wrote: post #7

I come from Australia, have lived in the UK, Germany and Switzerland and now live in the US. What I find really interesting is just how badly real estate works online in the US. To quote Bart Simpson, it achieves what was previously thought physically impossible: it sucks and blows at the same time. In Australia there are basically two online sites for both rentals and sales: realestate.com.au and domain.com. They ha…

There are so many sites and nothing centralized has really taken off. Even when you boil it down to one city. Wrong. There IS something centralized: it's called the Multiple Listing Service, and ONLY Brokers and Realtors have "access" to it. They are salespeople, and salespeople compete only with each other. That 6 percent commission is the unwavering aspect of their model -- they built it to ensure that it always ge…

"Wrong. There IS something centralized: it's called the Multiple Listing Service, and ONLY Brokers and Realtors have "access" to it. They are salespeople, and salespeople compete only with each other. That 6 percent commission is the unwavering aspect of their model -- they built it to ensure that it always gets dropped into their shark tank. Consumers do not benefit from this system, ever, and every single entity in the real estate industry wants to keep it that way."

As much as the industry would like to thwart progress, they can't. There is too much money in this industry for their not to be "rebels" looking to take market-share by keeping prices low.

Companies like Redfin are offering flat-fee listings, with typical realtor services, including MLS listing.

There are quite a few "flat fee MLS" services as well that offer bare-bones services to buyers, mostly getting their house into MLS. While access is still restricted, a couple hundred dollars isn't a huge barrier.

I am currently selling my house and am using a flat-fee MLS service. I pay, I believe, $400 to have my house in MLS. I can then determine what commission a seller agent gets.

In a "traditional" MLS transaction, the seller agent gets 3% and the buyer agent (if there is one) gets 3%. Most realtors will negotiate that down, and I've personally offered 2.5% to seller agents on my house.

As to how worth-it the agent system is, a lot depends on your market. If you're in a large market, I'd expect the value of agents to go down because alternative systems are likely to be in place. I live in a small market and have used MLS, a sign in my front yard, Craigslist, and a few newspaper ads to market my house. I can say that 90% of inquiries have come from buyer agents through MLS. I'm going to have to give up a few thousand due to the 2.5%.

Re: YouGotListings (YC W11) looks to provide the best tools for real estate

#45

Post by T-hawk »

tptacek wrote: post #43
defen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is objectively untrue for any sensible definition of "most": 67.4% of inhabited housing units in the US are inhabited by the owner. Are you sure that 67.4% of inhabited housing units in the US are actually inhabited by the owner? If I take out a 30 year loan on a house and then move in, the bank still owns that property. I would expect the number to be significantly lower than 67.4% when you factor in rentals…

The bank does not own your mortgaged house. They have a claim on it when it comes time to liquidate. It's easy to see that the homeowner "owns" the house: they can rent it to anyone else at any rate, raising rates as the market changes; the bank is stuck with the terms of the 30 year mortgage.

> It's easy to see that the homeowner "owns" the house:

More to the point, the homeowner is the one exposed to appreciation or depreciation on the open market. The bank has a fixed dollar value worth.

Re: YouGotListings (YC W11) looks to provide the best tools for real estate

#46

Post by defen »

tptacek wrote: post #43
defen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is objectively untrue for any sensible definition of "most": 67.4% of inhabited housing units in the US are inhabited by the owner. Are you sure that 67.4% of inhabited housing units in the US are actually inhabited by the owner? If I take out a 30 year loan on a house and then move in, the bank still owns that property. I would expect the number to be significantly lower than 67.4% when you factor in rentals…

The bank does not own your mortgaged house. They have a claim on it when it comes time to liquidate. It's easy to see that the homeowner "owns" the house: they can rent it to anyone else at any rate, raising rates as the market changes; the bank is stuck with the terms of the 30 year mortgage.

Good point. But there does seem to me (never owned a home) that there is a qualitative difference between someone who owns their home in the clear, and someone who is using their home as collateral for a loan, which I thought the original poster was getting at. I might be way off though.

Re: YouGotListings (YC W11) looks to provide the best tools for real estate

#47

Post by tptacek »

defen wrote: post #46
tptacek wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bank does not own your mortgaged house. They have a claim on it when it comes time to liquidate. It's easy to see that the homeowner "owns" the house: they can rent it to anyone else at any rate, raising rates as the market changes; the bank is stuck with the terms of the 30 year mortgage.

Good point. But there does seem to me (never owned a home) that there is a qualitative difference between someone who owns their home in the clear, and someone who is using their home as collateral for a loan, which I thought the original poster was getting at. I might be way off though.

Sure there is: one homeowner has a couple hundred thousand dollars of secured debt, and the other doesn't. In neither case is there any practical difference vis a vis the house itself. The homeowner who "owns his home free and clear" can still lose the house owing to any other major debt; there are even states where you are likely to lose your house in a conventional bankruptcy.

Re: YouGotListings (YC W11) looks to provide the best tools for real estate

#48

Post by thaumaturgy »

tptacek wrote: post #36
shawnee_ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, my typo. I can't remember the exact verbatim text that my economics textbook cited, but one of the underlying assumptions of "market forces" economics is that information isn't unduly restricted; it's more or less accessible to any parties that want it. In this example, the MLS is blatant restriction of information, and it definitely creates information asymmetry.

Far be it from me to stand athwart your argument against realtors, but: how effective can they be at seizing control of the market via the MLS? Yes, you have to be a real estate agent to list there, but when I bought my house in '05, I had no trouble at all getting access to MLS listings. The MLS --- which, I probably agree, is a shady system --- is not some secret parchment guarded by the Stonecutters. Pretty much a…

MLS availability varies from region to region according to the local board of realtors. And, even in regions where the MLS is generally available, that availability may be limited to specific agencies, with others not participating at all.

(Once upon a time I did some I.T. and software maintenance work for a number of local realtors and the local board.)

Oh, and also, various MLS interfaces (e.g. Paragon) provide a lot more information on properties than non-realtors have access to.

Re: YouGotListings (YC W11) looks to provide the best tools for real estate

#49

Post by thaumaturgy »

pg wrote: post #38
shawnee_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market forces can't really work effectively on the problem when there is information asymmetry, can they? Market forces presume rational behavior, and perfect information. I will assume that the expected result of this startup (why YC invested in it) is that the market will somehow become more "efficient" because communication between brokers and landlords will be facilitated. I will predict that the actual result of…

Let me try again. Suppose I decide to rent out my house. The price I can get for it depends on how much people like it compared to other houses that are available. How is the amount of rent that I can get being gamed upward, in a way that it isn't if, for example, I decide to sell my car? (Unless you believe that used car prices are also inflated across the board.)

I'm renting a house now, and I've been shopping around for a store/office space for a few months now.

And, yes, prices are being held unnaturally high. If they weren't, I would expect to see far fewer empty storefronts than I do now -- and I've recently seen this not just in my local small town, but also in Sacramento, in the Bay Area, and even in Seattle.

Locally, I know for a fact that there are a number of property owners that would prefer to have their space sit empty rather than rent it out for the amounts that people are willing to pay right now. I've talked to them.

Housing is not that much different, except that at the moment there is higher-than-usual demand for rental properties, so the "market forces" are driving the prices upward. Still, unless you are a property owner who foolishly can't afford to let a building sit vacant, you can get away with charging higher rent than other people are for similar properties.

I agree with the person here saying that these effects are due to information asymmetry. As a prospective renter -- either for commercial or for housing space -- in order to find the best possible deal, I must invest a lot of time contacting numerous people, reviewing various Google Maps mashups, reviewing classifieds, and wandering around town. As a landlord, to set a price I simply have to take a quick glance at what nearby properties are going for, add a little bit to that amount, and then wait.

Eventually, a prospective renter will come along, because they don't know where the better deal is.

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