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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

#591

On a similar note, real estate agents need to be knocked down a level. Their job is to unlock a door. Why they can make a hundred thousand dollars a year is criminal.

I think the home purchasing system can and should be streamlined radically, and good real estate agents can make too much money for their actual contribution in many cases, but there's a bit more involved than merely unlocking a door and giving a tour of the kitchen and living room.

For instance, merely putting together an offer to buy a house can be ultra complex. Once you've dealt with viewing the house and deciding to go for it, you have to deal with inspections and financing and insurance and other legal things. If there's a problem with the house, you have to know the right questions to ask and how to take the problems into account when making an offer. You have to know the local market well and what kind of offer to make or you could overpay by thousands or miss out on a dream home.

On top of that, client contracts aren't worth the paper they're printed on for a real estate agent. A real estate agent can in theory luck out showing a client one home, they love it, buy it without a hitch, and come away with thousands of dollars for a few hours of work. A real estate agent can also work with a client for weeks/months, show them dozens of houses, but then they go off and buy that exact house with another agent and lose out on the commission with basically no real recourse after investing many hours working for somebody for free. For every good financial thing that happens to an agent, they end up getting taken for a ride by others.

Disclosure: I do have my own biases here as a friend is a real estate agent and I see some of the good and bad parts of the job.

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

#592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What I think, and what you think, is irrelevant. Back up your claims, or they're just you trying to convince yourself you know something you don't. Cutting out the middle man does not by definition lead to monopolies, especially not when the market has tens of thousands of sellers (if not orders of magnitude more), and tens of thousands of buyers (or, renters, in this case. And again, if not orders of magnitudes more…

It’s not cutting out the middle man - it’s replacing the middle man with a software middle man. The only way that doesn’t lead to a monopoly is if there are multiple software middle men competing. Like, do you actually believe that uber is just a platform connecting buyers (riders) with sellers (drivers)? It’s a taxi company. It replaced a dozen taxi companies in each city with a monopoly or an duopoly (when lyft is also present).

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

#593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except 99% of people wont accept month to month due to the instability.

Another option is for landlords to price the additional risk into the rent itself. But there’s no way you’re going to add risk into the market without that having some effect on pricing.

Housing is a policy area with a lot of unintended consequences. I honestly don't know how I feel about the Oregon law.
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