I found my current apartment on Craigslist through an ad my landlord put up. I had to spend hours churning through what is essentially spam: brokers listing apartment or listing that they have listings but not actually giving out much information on individual places.
Services like this one and Rentjuice are services for brokers to find landlords and property managers who want to rent their apartments. (unless I misunderstand what's going on here.) Why are these services uniting landlords with managers and not with renters? I am tired of dealing with aggressive, bullshit-talking real estate agents who make money by having what amounts to a monopoly on rental information. In my experience they've got the incentive to get me into some apartment, any apartment as quickly as possible, they need me off their list ASAP, I need to find a place I'm going to spend most of my time in for at least a year. The general inability to listen to basic requests further annoys me, an agent has 4 apartments that fit my requirements, but I get dragged into places that don't meet my price requirements before getting around to the places I might actually rent.
The situation strikes me as ludicrous and it seems startups should be actively trying to dismantle this old-school ossified way of doing things. (see: AirBnB for hotels/temporary lodging as well as that car service one whose name I don't recall.) Craigslist listings moved us a big step in the correct direction, but they're still full of spam. It seems to me that real estate agents receive a lot more money than the value they're delivering. This may not be true with house purchases which is certainly more complicated and outside my experience.
"The SaaS allows landlords to post new listings, which get distributed in real-time to the brokers they’ve selected."
Why aren't these being distributed to the people who need apartments?
Edited to add:
"The software also includes tools for syndicate rental listings to general listing sites like Trulia, Hotpads, Craigslist and others. "
I can't believe I missed this the first time around. Worst case scenario (which I lean toward) means the above "feature" may as well read "We're going to ruin other services by helping you to spam them more easily."
Sounds like a step in the wrong direction for renters, who should be the customers at the center of all of these transactions.
Thanks for the comment. Your point is certainly well taken and not alone. Unfortunately, one of the things we do is to help brokers and agents "spam", but it's a supply / demand thing. Landlords are well aware of Craigslist's existence, and if they wanted to be on there themselves, they would, right?
We ultimately are trying to tackle this issue and make it better for the renters and buyers. Yet, going against the market force will not help. Brokers will do what makes them money, that's that. Many startups came before us trying to cut out the brokers have failed utterly.
I believe companies like us in the long run will actually improve this situation. As software like ours become the standard toolset that brokers and landlords use, then we'll be able to improve the actually renting / buying experiences. It's an uphill battle.
Thanks for responding, I certainly see where you're coming from, as you've said, you can't change an entire industry over night, but that won't stop people like me from wishing that you could.
I guess I'm impatient for a company like yours to succeed and visibly improve things for renters & buyers. I wish you the best of luck going forward.
A good alternative is PadMapper.com. Somehow, they are able to cut out a ton of crap from the over postings. Worth a shot if you are looking for an apartment.
Padmapper is phenomenal, but craigslist sucks so bad, that it ends up just being mildly useful. The ability to constantly and repeatedly relist the same (often fictional) property really depresses me. So easy to fix, and would make life so much better for users, yet, it will never get fixed. And yet, craigslist continues to dominate so many markets. Why god, why?
Theoretically the broker also has the incentive not to waste time with you, and to make you happy so that you give referrals. Since rental turnover is a lot higher, this would be even stronger an incentive than for home sales.
Services like this one and Rentjuice are services for brokers to find landlords and property managers who want to rent their apartments. (unless I misunderstand what's going on here.) Why are these services uniting landlords with managers and not with renters? I am tired of dealing with aggressive, bullshit-talking real estate agents who make money by having what amounts to a monopoly on rental information. In my experience they've got the incentive to get me into some apartment, any apartment as quickly as possible, they need me off their list ASAP, I need to find a place I'm going to spend most of my time in for at least a year. The general inability to listen to basic requests further annoys me, an agent has 4 apartments that fit my requirements, but I get dragged into places that don't meet my price requirements before getting around to the places I might actually rent.
The situation strikes me as ludicrous and it seems startups should be actively trying to dismantle this old-school ossified way of doing things. (see: AirBnB for hotels/temporary lodging as well as that car service one whose name I don't recall.) Craigslist listings moved us a big step in the correct direction, but they're still full of spam. It seems to me that real estate agents receive a lot more money than the value they're delivering. This may not be true with house purchases which is certainly more complicated and outside my experience.
"The SaaS allows landlords to post new listings, which get distributed in real-time to the brokers they’ve selected." Why aren't these being distributed to the people who need apartments?
Edited to add: "The software also includes tools for syndicate rental listings to general listing sites like Trulia, Hotpads, Craigslist and others. "
I can't believe I missed this the first time around. Worst case scenario (which I lean toward) means the above "feature" may as well read "We're going to ruin other services by helping you to spam them more easily." Sounds like a step in the wrong direction for renters, who should be the customers at the center of all of these transactions.