RentHop (YC S09): Easier Apartment Hunting, Without The Broker Fee | Hacker News Reader

RentHop (YC S09): Easier Apartment Hunting, Without The Broker Fee

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Hello HN, and thank you for the kind comments! I'm one of the founders of RentHop.com.

To clarify, there are many honest brokers with exclusive no-fee listings, especially in certain neighborhoods such as West Village and Midtown East. If we banned even these brokers, then we would be missing out on a legitimate subset of the available no-fee apartments.

Our current policy is that we will only accept brokers with no-fee exclusives to post on our site (as opposed to a broker with an open listing, which is easy to detect).

In short, the legal landlord gave that broker the exclusive right to be the rental agent and-or property manager. Think of them as mom & pop versions of the big corporate leasing offices; the real landlord specifically does not want to be involved in the leasing process and paid to outsource it.

You're doing a great service. Even Craigslist NYC is a nightmare with all the bait and switch tactics.

I'm going to recommend RentHop to my NYC contacts! :)

Don't forget there are plenty of small building owners and managers who don't have the time or capacity to be showing apartments to prospective tenants. Some have even resorted to hiring brokers and paying their fees to get units filled.

Sure there are plenty of unscrupulous brokers out there, but some do provide an invaluable service.

As someone who just moved to NYC, I can definitely say this would definitely have been extremely useful. We ended up paying 12% to a broker, which we did only because we didn't wanna make more trips back and forth from Philadelphia to look at apartments. In a few years, I hope RentHop is still around and has more market share so we can use it.

Here's a NYTimes article about RentHop: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/realestate/08rent.html

The comparison with RDNY.com (a 14-year-old competitor) is fairly illuminating/discouraging, if somewhat brief. Regardless, I certainly hope these guys succeed. The more services to help New Yorkers avoid abuse from real estate brokers, the better.

The interactive free-broker-service angle that the RentHop guys are taking is perplexing to me, but I must say it helps them stand out. I hope the approach does not hinder them from scaling up to the point where they can offer a better range of listings.

Ah, I'm glad we're not in the Wayback Machine because our site back then was pretty embarrassing!

I'd say over 80% of what you see today was done after we left our jobs to do this full time.

What is most interesting about this startup idea is the actual structure of the renting / real estate biz and how much commissions are a part of it. If these "brokers" have so much time to spend spamming craigslist (not just in NYC, but everywhere), there is something VERY wrong with the industry. Of course, I've been saying this for a long time. Happy to see a company actually doing something about it.

Good luck guys! I will be rooting for you.

Great Idea. I suspect you will be do most of your marketing in NYC. I will be starting a local business startup too. I am curious to learn how you market in a big city such as NYC.

PS I added the site to http://appuseful.com/app/n/Rent-hop .

I'd like to see something come out for the commercial real estate market. It's really hard to shop online (without paying a monthly fee to costar or loopnet) for access to information that is freely available.

Would you mind sharing where commercial real estate listings data is freely available? I've thought about expanding PadMapper to include it.

From the leasing companies. For example, if you go the CBRE site, you can view all of their properties there, via a software service provided by loopnet. There's definitely room to start another service by getting those listings out there to a broader audience.

The Chicago rental market --- the third-largest metro market in the country --- is nothing like the NYC rental market. Brokers here are free, paid by developers and landlords. I've had extremely excellent luck working with them, landing 3 excellent places inside of a week each time, at Craigslist-competitive prices.

I'm sure there's a long-term play here in NYC and maybe SF and LA, and I'm sure that's a find bootstrap to a long-term offering nationwide, but I just want to chime in with the observation that the NYC rental market is an anomaly. I don't think we have the pain RentHop tries to solve in Chicago.

We don't, but Boston, Washington DC, and many college towns do. Hell, I'd say that even Evanston is a bit skewed that way. In the city, certain pockets like the Southport Corridor probably exhibit some of the cutthroat nature of NYC because we're so over-condo'ed in those areas. But Chicagoans, we just drive everywhere. :)

In other markets landlords and developers pay the broker fee, but maybe that opens the door for Redfin-like model, which touts discount brokers.

I'd argue that discount rental brokers, who mainly show apartments and screen tenants, are easier to commoditize than sales brokers, who play a significant role in a very expensive transaction.

Wow...first time I have seen the HN community more critical than the TC community.

The most critical comments are coming from several accounts that were created in the last hour. I wonder if someone is gaming the thread.

Sure enough. They were all from the same ip address, and so were nearly all the upvotes on them.

Looks like at least some of those comments are being replaced with [Dead], I guess that means a mod agrees with you?

Amateur spammers are behind it.

Edit: Wow and the comments keep appearing. The Rent Hop guys must be doing something right.

If only we could post some of the comments we were getting from brokers right after the NYT article!

select * from feedback; was definitely NSFW

Nowadays it's our hab.la live chat that's getting all the juicy stuff.

I saw this one a while back: http://www.habitastic.com/

looks similar. Seems like this type will heat up due to the decline of homeowner market

Looks very slick. I wonder if they are allowed crawling other sites like craigslist to add content to theirs. I realize most craigslist ad's for NY dont list addresses but some must.

not a fan of the homepage, lots of white space and a single pic of an empty apartment(9/10 refreshes).

the browse listings page would work much better as the homepage

Unfortunately it is useless for me, as it is NYC specific. For us located in other areas, padmapper is more useful.

In what parts of the US are broker fees for rentals common?

Every rental broker charges a fee for their services, the difference is whether the renter or landlord pays for it. It's a matter of local custom and market conditions, and New York City has traditionally been very heavily skewed towards renters paying.

its always san fran or nyc....damn.

http://www.padmapper.com (my hobby site) has a bunch of other cities, if you're looking for a place.

Nice work!

I don't remember which CL/Google Maps scraper I was looking at earlier in the week, but this is far better, and quite a few popular ones don't seem to scrape Rochester.

Since I'm currently scoping out a new place, this'll come in real handy.

doesn't have my city (santa barbara), but the site looks good; good work, and good luck.

Thanks! I just added santa barbara for you, it should populate with listings soon.

just tired it, it worked! thanks! bookmarked! wow, this experience rocks, especially considering i've wanted exactly this for quite some time --- thanks so much. once again, you rock.

Great, glad it's working! Please let me know if you have any suggestions for improvements. Good luck with your hunt!

http://hotpads.com has about 350k rental listings spread all over the US, and none are from craigslist.

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