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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.
This service is effectively illegal in Quebec.
Enjoy paying $3000 for a shithole in Manhattan you anti-regulation lunatics
As a landlord we'd never use this service. Who the hell is gonna show the apartments and however long the bidding war takes means I am out that money if I just could have gotten it rented. And I have to pay a fee for my unit being vacant because of some stupid bidding war, and all my leases will just have random dates instead of something standard like the 1st of the months?
Sounds like a really stupid idea for most landlords
I can tell you that before rentberry, the price is pretty much set by the market. You really can't raise it or even lower it much. Frankly, I can't see rentberry changing this much, any more than AirBnb already has. If rents get too high, people either move further out and accept a longer commute, or they buy. People flock to the cheaper areas.
The difference between a profitable landlord and a poor one is mainly due to two factors (both even more important in the age of AirBnb):
a) Keeping every apartment/ room filled. A vacant apartment eats all your profit. If you have a large enough portfolio of rental units, this becomes an accepted cost of doing business, but if you four or less units, it kills your profits.
b) Avoiding the bad tenant. The guy that needs to be evicted, or simply destroys the place. There is ZERO chance I would trust a website to figure out who is a good tenant and who is a bad one. You need to meet them in person and see what if any requests or issues they have.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
to one month's rent. I'm sure Attorney General Healey is going to be very interested in this.