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We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

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Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#571

Post by crazygringo »

unishark wrote: post #543
CydeWeys wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously you're not going to use it if your landlord doesn't allow subleases, In many jurisdictions, including New York, the law requires that landlords allow subleases. Tenants have a lot more rights than you might think.

Subleasing is kind of a red herring. There are particular reasons landlords might want to avoid letting that happen willy-nilly. But if the company finds a tenant that conforms to the landlord's requirements, the landlord can agree to a transfer of the lease, or just agree to break the lease and start a new one with the new tenant.

What do you mean a red herring?

In NYC, it's usually required for a subletter to take over the remainder of a lease and then have the option of signing a new lease. The option to simply immediately break the old lease and start a new one usually doesn't exist. (Or if it does, it's only with a penalty for the lease-breaker.)

I don't know why this is, however -- if it's for administrative convenience, legal reasons, or financial reasons. But your idea that "the landlord can agree to the transfer of a lease", well it's true they can, but as a general rule they won't.

Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#572

Post by crazygringo »

unishark wrote: post #548
CydeWeys wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not rejecting (all) qualified tenants though so much as they are merely using some kind of algorithm to pick one of the many prospective qualified tenants. They can only choose one anyway, and FIFO is not necessarily the best strategy. So a better way to phrase the question would be "Why would they ever say no to all qualified prospective tenants?"

In California my understanding is they are required to accept the first qualified tenant due to anti-discrimination laws. I thought NY was similar in that regard (and hence the income=3*rent or whatever the popular advertised rules are there).

That's been my experience as well, in practice (I don't if there's a legal reason).

Yes they'll sometimes pick the most qualified applicant, but only if you submit your application the same day or same weekend, which is often the case with open houses. It really depends on the landlord however -- for a lot, it's literally the first qualified person to apply, which is why you want to be the first person to the open house and have all your documents ready to apply on the spot, since it might be gone 30 minutes later.

Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#573

Post by syshum »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #550
EricE wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fast food prices have increased greater than inflation for some time: https://www.delish.com/food/news/a39265/fast-food-menu-price... Thinking that labor costs do not impact product costs is grossly ignorant.

> Thinking that labor costs do not impact product costs is grossly ignorant. No one is arguing that labor cost doesn't impact product cost, but the fact is that in general it doesn't impact product price. Or to put it the other way: can you imagine a business not increasing product price as much as they can, regardless of the product cost, as long as the supply is matched? If they can increase the price, why would th…

You seem to be missing the fundmental problem here

Sure not all prices are infinitely elastic, but if Labor costs out strip the ability to prices to absorb them that do not mean the business simply magically makes them go away, no that business goes bankrupt and wages go to $0.

Owners / Investors demand a return on investment, if the market average is 8%, and business x is only returning 4% why would an investor continue to keep their capital there?

Worse still if inflation is 3% and the business is only returning 2% the investor is LOSING MONEY by keeping their capital in the business, better to cut their losses and move on

This mythical position where by businesses just "absorb the cost" because the prices are not elastic is pure fantasy

Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#574

Post by foobiekr »

handmodel wrote: post #408
foobiekr wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

early Uber wasn’t crazy, it was a blatant and malign attempt to use cheap capital to monopolize an existing sector. Uber is and was always about as close to evil as a company can be without selling opioids or nicotine.

I know me and you are not going to see eye-to-eye but I have trouble seeing how Ubers are more monopolistic than taxi companies which wanted a cap on the number of permitted taxi's per city - when they already had all the permits/medallions owned themselves.

Taxi companies (note the plural) were obviously not monopolies and the medallion systems generally required diversity of holders. That is not at all what Uber was up to. Uber was doing what used to be called dumping to destroy the incumbents.

Stop defending Uber. Even if you work for them it is incumbent on you as a citizen to be honest about what they were doing.

Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#575

Post by iFreilicht »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #31
cde-v wrote: post #6

Would love something like this to kill (or at least severely maim) the broker industry in NYC. 0 value added at the cost of 10-15% of yearly rent.

The assumption that software can solve this problem is simply wrong. It's the regulation change that needs to happen if you don't want that renter pay the broker "services". For example, a new law in Germany to apply the "who hires pays" principle for brokers in the renting market basically made the renting "broker fee free" for renters. Previously, the landlords would hire a broker that needed to be paid by the rent…

I liked the idea of that law, but in high-density areas, it didn't change anything. The renters are now implicitly expected to cover the broker fee for thee landlord. If they don't offer that in advance, they won't get the apartment.

Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#576

Post by pydry »

crazygringo wrote: post #569
pydry wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lyft and Uber have already dialed down their competition with each other in many locations and raised prices. If theyre smart theyre probably already hammering out an (illegal) agreement of some kind and figuring out ways to disguise the price rise as a natural side effect of something innocuous. Did you really think investors were willing to sustain a 12 billion dollar loss for a shot at a 1% margin?

> Lyft and Uber have already dialed down their competition with each other Citation needed. They've raised prices in order to be sustainable, but you're going to need to show some kind of actual evidence of collusion. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We can't just assume conspiracy theories between publicly traded companies here. And who's talking about 1% margins? You're making that up. Healthy c…

shrug they made losses of 15 billion dollars and all that would be required to stem future losses in what has become a stable duopoly is one conversation.

I tend to assume the path of least resistance.

Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#577

Post by crazygringo »

pydry wrote: post #576
crazygringo wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lyft and Uber have already dialed down their competition with each other Citation needed. They've raised prices in order to be sustainable, but you're going to need to show some kind of actual evidence of collusion. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We can't just assume conspiracy theories between publicly traded companies here. And who's talking about 1% margins? You're making that up. Healthy c…

shrug they made losses of 15 billion dollars and all that would be required to stem future losses in what has become a stable duopoly is one conversation. I tend to assume the path of least resistance.

The path of least resistance is not going to prison.

You realize that in publicly traded corporations decisions are made by whole teams of people? And that people talk? Word gets out, company gets fined more than they made, executives go to prison. The US actually prosecutes this stuff, the same way they vigorously prosecute insider trading.

A couple of neighboring grocery stores can realistically collude to raise prices. Multinational public corporations, not so much.

Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#578

Post by ebrenes »

xeromal wrote: post #501
subpixel wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hand to heart I’ve had more Ubers not show up (more than 5) than I did car services over several decades of NYC living. Worse they claimed I didn’t show up.

I would posit that New York city is probably the best example you could come up with in the United States. Pretty much everywhere else Uber is supreme

I don't live in New York City, but when I was there Uber was the absolute best option for our use case, because they were the only option that allowed us to ask for a toddler carseat as an extra. It was a game changer and preferred that over taxis and other car services.

Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#579

Post by heurisko »

infogulch wrote: post #492
justaguy88 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The landlord can decide if it's worth paying them then

That's not how anything works. The money doesn't just come from nowhere, or from the landlord's profits. It is accounted for as an increase to rent. That's what I meant by "surprise fees", you're still paying them, they're just not a surprise anymore. Maybe the increased transparency in the market will push out brokers that aren't adding value, but that's more of a hope.

It's not a hope, it's reality in other countries, like the UK.

We banned letting agent fees charged to the tenant. Miraculously, landlords didn't find paying £250 for a contract renewal value for money.

Rents continue to go up and down, but now tenants know they are spending money on their flat or house, rather than paying inflated fees to a letting agent/broker.

Re: We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments

#580

Post by kennywinker »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #506
kennywinker wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> software can solve this problem now. Software can displace a middle man, and replace it with a monopoly. Once monopoly power is in place, Software will then become more and more expensive until it is as bad or worse than what it supplanted. Investors will get rich, there will be a brief bubble where some people will get a VC-funded good deal, and then nobody else wins.

You're going to have to work a lot harder to argue the connection between the first and second part of that first sentence, because one does not lead to the other. You might be right --I don't think you are, but you might be-- but right now that sentence means nothing, and that fully undermines whatever point you're trying to argue.

Are you saying that you don't think startups seek to displace middle men and create monopolies? or are you saying companies with monopolies don't exploit those to overcharge people as much as possible?

Because neither of those statements is exactly controversial.

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