Do you pay the right rent? Compare all rents, all over Europe
rentswatch.com
rentswatch.com
Do agree the slide show is annoying and entirely redundant.
There's a list of supported cities here: http://www.rentswatch.com/#!/city/
They're claiming to have the largest database of rent prices in Europe, is this true?
I've collected about the same number just using one website API for around one month while I was searching a few years ago:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kakwa/supybot-plugin-selog...
And their statistics are far too simple. For example there are huge differences between very small flats (~15m^2) and flats above ~50m^2, the price per square meter is 50% higher for the small ones.
A global average like presented is nearly meaningless.
And say it's Europe only up front.
But I interpret their comment as more directed toward HN users than the creator of this site. That they felt cheated, seeing this link on the HN front page only to discover that it's lame and rude. I think it's perfectly fine to express that discontent in the comments, especially since HN doesn't allow downvoting stories.
Leaving comments along the lines of "I tried it and it sucked because it doesn't support the US" is not, in my opinion, in line with the hacker news civility guidelines -- it's not constructive, especially when "all over Europe" is explicitly mentioned in the post's title. As for site portraying rent prices as "high"... it's all relative; those prices may be high for people in Europe, even though they might be paltry compared to SFBA.
What I didn't like was that it assumed that 5% higher than average was like some crazy high percentage and I'm getting totally fleeced and "Ooh snap! We warned you! You totally shouldn't have clicked this link! (except we baited you into it)"
It's the attitude the website presented, not the actual data. And it's constructive in so much as I don't want people to use this site as a guideline on how to communicate with its audience when they make their own websites.
5% of my rent is roughly $50 a month, btw. Not insignificant, but not enough to warrant its tone either. And I don't live in the Bay Area, thanks for making another assumption about me.
Vitriol? Spite? Please. I think it's a helpful comment for how to improve the website.
I also live in the US, and entered the equivalent of my rent, floor area, and used Google Maps to pick what looked like an equivalent location in a major city. Apparently people within 2km of my chosen location are paying half? Ok, that's true in my city as well, except 2km is the difference between a building on the water with a doorman, and living somewhere where people shoot up on the stoop to your building.
>>XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://api.rentswatch.com/api/cities/all. No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. Origin 'http://www.rentswatch.com' is therefore not allowed access.
The squares in the centre of the city have about 5-40 data points in each one, except for the very middle square, which has over 3000. That square has the central post office, and therefore postcode 1000. Perhaps where all the "unknown, Copenhagen" data was allocated.
Not very accurate in Paris though, my rent is actually a good deal in my neighbourhood, and it states it's overpriced. But 2km radius in paris could lead to a x3 in price for the same surface ;)
It's a huge waste of everyone's time looking at places that are far smaller than the agent suggested. "2 bedrooms", but one used to be a closet.
That's really weird. It's one of the very few objective aspects to measure when comparing properties.
But I had no way of filling out your requested data. :(
To be clear, the amount I actually pay is lower because I have roommates.
SF is so crazily expensive right now that it wouldn't surprise me to see people sharing a single room (with bunkbeds or something) just to save money.
I'm so happy I don't live there.
What if you could see prices by particular sets of square meters? If I have a 300sq meter apartment, I'd want to see prices by the same size.
I do however think that the next big update should include some measure of the "location in the city". I chose my flat because of the prime location and not because of how big it is.
This sets the maximum rate that a local authority will pay as Housing Benefit for various types of property.
I have no idea if there's a central list of all the LHAs across England, or if you'd have to scrape all those sites yourself. But it would be useful information to have.
Here's the rates for Cheltenham: http://www.cheltenham.gov.uk/info/200008/benefits/565/local_...
You're not missing anything by skipping the fluff.
I moved in to my apartment back in 2011 and can not complete the form.
The scraper is here: https://github.com/jplusplus/rentswatch-scraper
Hm, they don't seem to include a specific implementation for Craigslist, though they mention it as a datasource on their blog. Maybe email them for a copy of that.
In Omaha, Nebraska, at least, Craigslist isn't the final word on rent prices. You'll find disproportionate representation of certain classes of apartment/house. The cheapest and the most expensive housing won't be found on CL.