Slashdot Mirror
Bidding Website Rentberry May Be the Startup of Your Nightmares (gizmodo.com)
Renting is already fraught with pain, from annual rent hikes to extortionate lettings fees. But if a new service called Rentberry takes off, it could be about to get a lot worse. From a report: Rentberry has been operating in test cities and angering affordable housing advocates since 2016. But with its new expansion into 1,000 cities in the United States, the rental bidding website is about to piss off a lot more people. Alex Lubinksy, founder of Rentberry, seems to be pursuing an image that's closer to Uber's vilified Travis Kalanick than the do-gooder model of Elon Musk. Lubinsky courts the controversy that surrounds his startup and is known to include negative press when communicating his vision to reporters. But one big difference with Rentberry will be that if it takes off and becomes the new standard for renting apartments, most of its customers won't be able to run a #deleteRentberry campaign because landlords will have the control. The website essentially functions as a cross between CraigsList and eBay. A landlord lists a rental space and potential tenants bid against one another to claim the lease. Tenants' personal information is available to the landlord. The landlord then makes their final decision by weighing what the best offer is along with which bidder seems like they'd be the best tenant. For now, Rentberry charges users a $25 fee, but in the future, it plans to charge 25 percent of the difference between the asking price and the agreed upon rent. Whoever received the better deal pays the fee -- every month.
It matches supply with demand. If rents are too high the root problem is there isn't enough housing being built. All of this yelling about "greed" and "rent control" and even worse -- high minimum wage -- are just bandaids that won't solve the root of the problem.
So politicians get to "champion the little guy" with ineffective measures while enjoying their large lots for their own housing and collecting expensive property taxes. But woe be you if you're a developer seeking to build more housing units. Fees and permits alone will scare away all but the most determined (and profit seeking).
"Only on slashdot are we presented with an example of a startup giving complete control of rental housing pricing to the renters"
How do you figure? The landlord can still reject anyone they don't like, they won't be forced to rent below their 'reserve price' if they don't want to. All it does is pit renters directly against each other not only to "qualify" but now you'll have to compete by offering more money too.
Meanwhile the company is not just offering this as a service for a flat fee or even a percentage of the rental -- they want a residual income stream for as long as the rental goes on.
You know what adding another middleman to the deal means? It means the prices go up. Period. Further, it complicates the ability to even negotiate rent with the landlord in the future, since this company is now sitting in the middle taking a piece of each months rent for doing fuck all beyond extracting a higher rate from you in the first place.
So yeah.. if you are a renter this is pretty much awful. If you are landlord, it's not necessarily too bad, although most landlords aren't going to be keen to see any money flowing to this company month after month that they think should be going to them. I mean... all it should take is "another startup" that charges a flat 25$ fee with no bullshit residuals to kill these guys outright. Wonder if that will happen? Or will they get total market capture like MLS for property sales, and then not using the system becomes a disadvantage.
"rent-seeking" usually refers to entities that benefit from government mandates. This is not the case here.
Typically yes, but it is not solely from government sources. From wikipedia: "Rent-seeking implies extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity." Basically any type of middle-man arrangement with no real added value is rent seeking. In fact, this is worse than a middle man if you consider their long-term goal of charging off of the difference (either way) from the original asking price: their ideal situation is one is which one party gets a decidedly sub-optimal outcome, thereby creating negative value.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Is that landlords have access to bidders personal information, and that the landlord gets to "choose" among the bidders who actually gets to rent the property, regardless of their offers. The article compares the service to ebay, but a key difference is that on ebay the highest bidder always gets the item, provided they can actually pay up. By putting that power instead in the hands of the landlords, the company is really shooting themselves in the foot. Some landlord somewhere will eventually turn down a higher bid from a black/latino/etc potential tenant in favor of a white one, or a male tenant instead of a female one or vice versa, etc etc. Then both the landlord and the company will be buried up to their eyeballs in litigation from every conceivable direction.
Hey, if you want to maintain your view of the beach ... join together with your neighborhoods to purchase that property, and maintain it as you see fit—and pool your resources together to fend off that violently imposed monopoly (something something eminent domain).
I did join together with my neighbors to purchase the property. It's called being a citizen and paying taxes.
Oh, wait, did you mean to pool together with such a small group that we could be easily overruled by a corporation?
Nope, no sig
Well, at some point, a city is a finite resource, and it sounds like NYC is about full, and people need to look elsewhere perhaps, to live?
Sure, everyone has a right to live wherever they want, but they don't necessarily have a right to "afford" to live wherever they want.
Everything in life has a price.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Resources get allocated poorly, producing too much of what the economy doesn't need, and too little of what the economy does need.
"The economy" doesn't need shit. It's people who need things.
Nope, no sig
Pay a fee every month? yeah that guarantees that it will not become the standard.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.