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.
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.
Not sure what you are basing that off of. IME, right now you can find some decent FRBOs and haggle down price. You also can probably haggle down broker fees in some situations, but it's not like there is a glut of cheap housing to be had. I guess if you are renting a 3K month 1BR in a condo conversion downtown, you might be able to pull off a free month (but you aren't getting it cheaper).
It still sucks to find a great place in NYC, it's just sucking less.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
heh yeah, heavily inspired. This was basically an attempt to fix the problems I had using HousingMaps. The features are there, just tucked away - click "Filter Listings" in the box on the lower left, or the blue bar on the right that says "Favorites".
Anyone ever looked at flipping the relationship? e.g., people looking for accommodation post their budget, basic details (no name or photo, just rough indication of job status, industry, pets, etc) and then owners would try to get the best tenants from those available?
I believe a lot of no-fee apartment complexes in NYC offer a referral fee to the website that refers a lease signer, which is at least part of the reason that a lot of apartment sites deal exclusively in large apartment complexes. This isn't charged directly, but amortized in generally higher-than-average rents.
But did you expect that this startup wouldn't be planning on any money by playing the middle man?
Eh, maybe not now, but they were apparently picked up by YC - they probably have at least some novel ideas. I just had a look at their NY Times article, and they seem to have at least one - setting up appointments with the realtors online.
But yeah, I know the NYC housing game is pretty brutal, I've played it too, unfortunately.
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.