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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.
was suppose to make the world a better place? So far all I'm seeing is crap like this and Fake News. It's not lookin' good.
Oh, and you know, we could just ban stuff like this. I'm just saying...
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Rather than allowing the economy to send out signals about what is wanted and needed, zoning regulations, building regulations, renting regulations, mortgage rate manipulations, lending quotas, etc., all distort those signals until nobody knows what's going on.
The outcome of such confusion is obvious: Resources get allocated poorly, producing too much of what the economy doesn't need, and too little of what the economy does need. And, when the whole thing comes crashing down, the fools who crafted the errant "policy" suggest that the problem was not enough "policy" in the first place.
Please, allow people to pursue their happiness (read: pursue their self interest); it is in your best interest to live within a society that runs smoothly.
Rent-seeking off those seeking rent. Oh the irony.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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, and then told that this is evil. As a renter who has lived at both ends of the spectrum, I almost impaled my face with my own palm when reading this story.
This service is effectively illegal in Quebec.
Enjoy paying $3000 for a shithole in Manhattan you anti-regulation lunatics
Because the properties list their rates before hand and are already pricing based on demand. You dont have to outbid somebody else for it.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Where is the value delivered to the paying customers, renters, for this service? Also, what does this startup controls that would prevent instant competition if this model becomes successful?
This has dotcom pets.com written all over it.
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
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.
No. NYC does not have enough rental units. Too many people prevent development, and I'm not talking about putting up 30 story buildings in brownstone neighborhoods - but allowing 2 and 3 story buildings to be replaced with 5 story brownstones would be great.
Downtown Brooklyn already has large buildings and the "don't develop" people are preventing more buildings going up in an area that makes sense to build up. Each time you restrict new apartments from going up you make the price more expensive for everyone else.
As a landlord I say thank you. My property value is going up. As a human being who cares about his city I think this knee-jerk anti-capitalist reaction is BS and hurting everyone.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
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
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
, and I will negotiate a lower rent, more amenities, or I'll move.
Oh wow, this makes me laugh. I own quite a few rentals and I guarantee if you tried to negotiate like that I'd have no problem not renewing your lease and finding someone else while simultaneously raising the rent. It's not as hard to find someone to replace you as you may think.
Now if you were a good tenant and not a dick about things, I wouldn't raise your rent, but I also won't be making "substantial improvements" as you think you deserve.
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"And may your days be long upon the earth."
It sounds like the basic premise of this is to normalize "key money".
For those not in the know, sometimes property managers of hot properties will accept bribes from prospective tenants (either directly or through intermediary apartment "brokers") to secure leases for properties where the landlord has delegated rental lease responsibility to the property manager. Now it appears the landlord is going to get a cut of this in cold-hard cash and it will be recurring... Sad that they are attempting to normalize this practice... Maybe one of the founders was burned by a shady apartment "broker" in the past and decided that they wanted a piece of that action...
as "Perverse Incentives". I mean, otherwise we might have companies like Rentberry lobbying to block the expansion of affordable housing...
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This feels like a joke. This is a joke right? Because the value proposition, besides creating controversy, doesn't make sense. It seems like they're offering to solve information asymmetries, when supply differs from demand. But this creates new problems.
Landlords Now need to figure out when to close their auction to get the maximal volume of the best tenants paying the best prices. How do I even think about that?
Renters need to figure out on which rentals to bid. It seems like bids are binding - are they not? Is there conditional bidding and Rentberry is solving so complex logic problem? Or combinatoric bidding where renters can win only one item?
There are reasons that rental laws are biased against landlords. Most landlords aren't living in a duplex right next to their tenant -- that's simply not the case for 99.99% of the properties out there. Most landlords, in fact, own and operate several properties nowhere near their actual place of residence. What they are selling is a roof over the head of another individual or family.
So, in a situation where a tenant loses the ability to pay rent, it stands to reason that the landlord shouldn't be able evict that tenant immediately. Yeah, that has unfortunately lead to a black market for squatters, but it also serves its purpose as a firewall against aggressive landlords who would put a family on the street just as soon as the first payment was missed.
Pay a fee every month? yeah that guarantees that it will not become the standard.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
aggressive landlords who would put a family on the street just as soon as the first payment was missed.
Why is the landlord supposed to act as a bank with 0% interest?
Very insightful. I'm convinced.
to one month's rent. I'm sure Attorney General Healey is going to be very interested in this.
This is evil and deserving of a painful death.
Welcome to the race between the well-off the the more well-off.
In other words, if you're poor, fuck you.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
You're ignoring network effects, which is the reason why facebook is dominant and will remain so for at least the foreseeable future.
The choice does not like with the renter, it lies with the landlord. As soon as a significant percentage of landlords list their properties on this site, renters will have no choice but to use it, no matter what the terms of service are. This will entice even more landlords to list their properties here (because that's where all the tenants are, and they'll get sucked in to a bidding war just like on ebay), forcing even more tenants to have to sign up if they want somewhere to live.
That's the business model of this company: to exploit network effects to bootstrap themselves into a monopoly, and then enjoy the benefits of economic rent (aka unearned income) ever after.
> to exploit network effects to bootstrap themselves into a monopoly
Network effects (or more properly two-sided markets in this case) work exactly the opposite of what you're suggesting. Network effects work 100% to the advantage of the INCUMBENTS, and a monopoly would create a nearly impenetrable network, not the other way around. You can't "bootstrap" into an established market with network effects. On the contrary, network effects are a BARRIER to entry to established markets - the buyers are all on Zillow and Craigslist, so it would be irrational for any landlord to contract with this new company.
Facebook has the network effect BECAUSE it had the mmonopoly. Even mighty Google and Microsoft can't successfully enter that market because the network effect keeps new entrants OUT.
I think that NYC can add another 50% to it's population without become a nightmare. Of course mass transportation (probably light rail) will have to be increased but there are huge swatches of Brooklyn and Queens with 2 family buildings that are poorly constructed, Those neighborhoods would look better and hold more people with 5 story brownstones.
Furthermore as these neighborhoods are mostly working class it would provide more housing for middle class / working class people.
There is an island with an old fort in the harbor (Governor's Island) that is perfect for building Dubai sorts of towers for the mega rich. This way the mega rich (1/10 of 1% don't push out the very rich who don't push out the 1% who don't push out the upper middle class who don't push out the middle class (who then gentrifies the working class neighborhoods).
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond