High Resolution Pricing: Agents and Broker Edition
Updated 2 weeks ago
One of our Y Combinator batch mates way back in Summer 2009 was
a company called InstantQ, founded by Dana Levine and Jeff Shi.
They were an early version of Groupon, allowing restaurants to fine
tune pricing specific to certain customers, day of week, time of
day, etc.
At the time, Paul…
Better Than No Fee? Free Rent!
Updated 2 weeks ago
We previously discussed the concept of
1 AND 1 pricing. That is, the landlord should be willing to pay
the broker fees for finding high quality tenants to fill a vacancy,
and they should still offer all of the free rent concessions that
they would offer to direct deals. Breaking the price…
Is WeWork Default Dead or Default Alive?
Updated 2 weeks ago
Previously we talked about How Not To Die as a real estate agent. Another infamous
Paul Graham term is " Default Alive or
Default Dead". It sounds extremely harsh and morbid, but that's
part of the point. Calling a company Default Dead should trigger
some alarm bells.
WeWork today announced…
Can a Home Office be a Bedroom?
Updated 2 weeks ago
Don't worry, this is not a tax deduction discussion related to
whether you can
expense your bedroom as a home office as far as the IRS is
concerned. Instead of asking whether a bedroom can count as a home
office, we want to know whether a home office can count as a
bedroom!
As discussed in…
What’s the application process and screening criteria for a rental application?
Updated 2 weeks ago
Apartment searching can be stressful. Even after spending all
that time and energy searching for the perfect apartment, there is
still the question of if the landlord will choose you out of all
the other applicants. This brings us to the topic of the rental
application process. What it is and…
Exclusive Apartment Listings with Full Address Take Priority
Updated 2 weeks ago
The RentHop HopScore takes into account over 100
parameters when ranking listings in our search results. While the
formula is constantly changing, it is not a black box deep learning
algorithm. Our team of engineers and real estate experts
deliberately design all of the model features, then we…
Open Listing == Crowd Sourcing
Updated 2 weeks ago
An Open Listing arrangement allows multiple brokers to compete
with each other to find a suitable tenant to rent a vacant
apartment. It works best in markets such as New York City, with a
high volume of interested leads , but very low rate of actual
transaction.
Unfortunately, most perspective…
The 1 OR 1 Problem, No Fee, OP, and Net Effective Scams
Updated 3 weeks ago
Yesterday we gave a simple example of
net effective price calculations. There is also a more in-depth
explanation in our
rental guide. In an ideal world, the net effective price is
identical whether you approach a landlord directly or use a broker
to help. A few landlords still use an…
What is Net Effective Price?
Updated 3 weeks ago
The Net Effective Price is the monthly rent paid by a tenant to
the landlord after factoring in free rent incentives included at
lease signing. The term is common when searching for apartments for
rent in NYC, especially during the off-peak winter season when
landlords increasingly offer rental…
Banning the Bad Brokers
Updated 3 weeks ago
We previously discussed why brokers are necessary in the NYC
apartment rental scene - they make deals happen and
save everyone a lot of time.
Unfortunately, some bad apples give everyone in the business a
negative reputation. Over the past few months, we have
significantly stepped up our…
