I need to find an apartment • Hacker News Board

Re: I need to find an apartment

#41

Post by ghaff » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #38

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! "

This sounds like rent caps.

My initial reaction was that it sounds as if they're not charging nearly enough. You may want to be picky but that's ridiculous. But you may be right.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#42

Post by jean-malo » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 5:20 PM UTC

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.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#43

Post by novocantico » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

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 gotta get creative. Walking down the street I met this one guy who's like 70, eccentric, military vet, owns the house, and rents it out individual rooms for $550/month. He's paid off the mortgage, just needs to pay taxes, and he's clearly making a profit since he's retired and constantly has new projects working on the house. For context that's 1/3 asking price out here.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#44

Post by Cerium » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 5:23 PM UTC

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #25

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…

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.

The worse the advertisement the better. I lived in an absolutely lovely townhouse which had no pictures posted and a description which failed to mention any of the amenities. My current house was shown with no staging and blackout curtains. They only got 3 offers in 2 weeks, in a market where most listings get t 30 offers in a week. It pays to look seriously when doing so takes more effort.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#45

Post by tecleandor » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 5:24 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #17

dangus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of brokers work on commission that they get from the landlord. At least where I live, you don’t really pay for a broker as a buyer/renter, but I admittedly don’t know how that works in Luxembourg. A lot of brokers specialize on ex-pats, too! To expand on my point about knowing the local area, brokers know things like “what kind of person likes to live here?” Is it a young and trendy area or a quiet family neigh…

> A lot of brokers work on commission that they get from the landlord. It depends on the city. In NYC, the broker is pretty much always paid for by the person looking for an apartment, and it's quite a bit of money. I haven't looked for an apartment for 10 years, but I think it was 5-10% of the annual rent. (I imagine this gravy train is coming to its end, though. 10% was fine when your employer was paying for reloca…

Kind of similar in Spain. Usually it's equivalent to a whole month rent.

A new law a couple years ago mandated that, if the landlord is not a person (a corp / company / org...) they must be the ones paying the fee.

But I've been "extorted" twice in the last year by companies moving the payment to my person. And I say "extorted" because they defer details or information about the rental until the last minute, when you are days away from having to leave your old place and you have no other option.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#46

Post by jthrowsitaway » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 5:24 PM UTC

novocantico wrote: post #43

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 gotta get creative. Walking down the street I met this one guy who's like 70, eccentric, military vet, owns the house, and rents it out individual rooms for $550/month. He's paid off the mortgage, just needs to pay taxes, and he's clearly making a profit since he's retired and constantly has new projects working on the house. For context that's 1/3 asking price out here.

It's great that worked out for you. It'd be great if people didn't have to get creative to find basic housing.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#47

Post by TillE » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

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.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#48

Post by spike021 » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 5:30 PM UTC

About ten years ago I was attending San Jose State University and really needed to find a 1 bedroom apartment at a decent price (lol) in the downtown SJ area since I would no longer be living in the dorms.

I tried a few different ways of finding an apartment, but in the end it was one case where the old phrase "it's not what you know, it's who you know" worked in my favor.

During my freshman year I had found and been working a job on campus in one of the department offices (side note: if you're a student, you're best off trying to find a student assistant opening in a department office; at least at SJSU, most paid above minimum wage, were pretty lax and could be used for some study time, and you have so many opportunities to make connections with professionals).

One of my coworkers there had a family and they were living in one of these small ~8 unit apartment buildings downtown. It was a privately-owned building, not one of these newer, fancy conglomerate ones.

She connected me with the management/owner and long story short, I got a decently livable place with rent control for about 1/3 of market rate due to being a lower income student and taking a unit that wasn't recently refurbished (old carpet, old paint, etc.).

Re: I need to find an apartment

#49

Post by sonicggg » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 5:32 PM UTC

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! "

The pandemic allowed remote work to flourish. Why are people still crowding the cities? And of all the places, specially Berlin. Not even that great of a city. A lot of my friends fled the city.

Re: I need to find an apartment

#50

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

Etheryte wrote: post #15

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…

As someone who just jumped through all the hoops to find a new apartment, the pain is real. I think the main issue is that the incentives are misaligned from the perspective of the seeker. Where I'm currently at (the Netherlands), the market is dominated by agents. Using an agent makes sense from the perspective of the apartment owner — they will take care of managing the ads, initial screening, arranging viewings et…

[deleted]