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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.
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).
This service is effectively illegal in Quebec.
Enjoy paying $3000 for a shithole in Manhattan you anti-regulation lunatics
As a landlord we'd never use this service. Who the hell is gonna show the apartments and however long the bidding war takes means I am out that money if I just could have gotten it rented. And I have to pay a fee for my unit being vacant because of some stupid bidding war, and all my leases will just have random dates instead of something standard like the 1st of the months?
Sounds like a really stupid idea for most landlords
"Only on slashdot are we presented with an example of a startup giving complete control of rental housing pricing to the renters"
How do you figure? The landlord can still reject anyone they don't like, they won't be forced to rent below their 'reserve price' if they don't want to. All it does is pit renters directly against each other not only to "qualify" but now you'll have to compete by offering more money too.
Meanwhile the company is not just offering this as a service for a flat fee or even a percentage of the rental -- they want a residual income stream for as long as the rental goes on.
You know what adding another middleman to the deal means? It means the prices go up. Period. Further, it complicates the ability to even negotiate rent with the landlord in the future, since this company is now sitting in the middle taking a piece of each months rent for doing fuck all beyond extracting a higher rate from you in the first place.
So yeah.. if you are a renter this is pretty much awful. If you are landlord, it's not necessarily too bad, although most landlords aren't going to be keen to see any money flowing to this company month after month that they think should be going to them. I mean... all it should take is "another startup" that charges a flat 25$ 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.
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
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
Pay a fee every month? yeah that guarantees that it will not become the standard.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
to one month's rent. I'm sure Attorney General Healey is going to be very interested in this.