Bro, we need Glassdoor for renting…
I’ll build it, just as soon as you figure out how it gets paid for.
shake down bad landlords to delete bad reviews.
charge landlords for priority in search results.
sell searcher info as marketing data.
sell search trends as financial early indicators to hedge funds.
expand to HOA reviews for neighborhoods.
Real estate advertising, surely?
Yeah. No.
“Advertise your rental property on the page where your tenants review you.”
“I mean… If you really value your brand, you’ll stand behind it? I can put you on the opt-out list though, so future tenants know you don’t stand behind it. I’m offering value at a fraction of the cost of advertisement and you’re paying for peace of mind.”
Most retailer websites have customer reviews on them?
They could also promote houses for sale (not rent).
I think it works.
Get paid by landlords to remove negative reviews, like yelp. Offer to show all reviews, even removed ones, to renters that pay for the premium service.
Ew, I feel gross after coming up with that idea.
It’s a lovely pattern to look out for, your efforts to show just how ugly it is, are welcome.
For anyone considering implementing this: No.
Nonprofit … crowd funded… build it and all you need afterward are paying for servers. Then you’re just doing donations like Wikipedia. How much would would it cost to maintain such servers? Seems fundable by a wealthy liberal.
And then a wealthy slumlord does the math and finds out it’s cheaper to pay people to sabotage the website than to lose tenants due to reviews.
You know somehow wikipedia maintains it’s integrity pretty well.
Wikipedia has two significant advantages:
- The content is objective, and sources should be cited.
- Individual editors are volunteers with actual interest in their topics.
The former makes for a clear and low-effort bar for determining if a contribution is bad. If it’s not cited, or it’s biased, revert and move on. Figuring out if a user-written review is paid for, factually false, or exaggerated is a lot harder.
As for the latter… aside from doing it out of spite or as a favor to landlord friends, I have a hard time imagining that many people would volunteer their time moderating the review page about the apartment they rented 14 years ago.
Well, I don’t think the content is objective. There are many politically contentious articles and they have systems, disclaimers, and discussions to try to deal with it.
I think the moderators would be locals looking over an entire neighborhood, sort of like our Lemmy mods.
Just an FYI. Wikipedia is actually privately funded at this point. They don’t need donations anymore. From what I have seen of their financial statements, the donations are essentially building a slush fund for them, at this point, and have been for the last few years.
Yeah that’s kinda what I meant by the wealthy liberal thing. Make something good enough and you only need a couple good donors.
For apartment complexes there’s yelp/Google maps reviews.
Those are shit though, on average. Only the very upset respond. You’re going to have to figure out a way to make the satisfied show up.
I just left a building with 4.5 stars on Google that was an absolute horrific nightmare. Somehow they had gamed the system so that all the recent very negative reviews got mostly taken down or hidden. Do NOT trust Google reviews if you have any inkling the place is sketchy. (I did but the reviews and price were good)
Indeed, while this idea should work in principle, I’ve found it mostly useless in practice.
I don’t know if all large apartment complexes are notoriously bad, but a few years ago, you’d mainly find horrifically negative reviews on those sites (likely because only people who have had issues with them actually bothered to write a review in order to get their petty revenge on them).
Nowadays, all the management companies are aware of these sites, and they likely either pay Yelp to “manage” their reviews for them and/or incentivize their tenants to leave positive reviews (even though that’s technically against the rules). Meanwhile, small buildings generally aren’t even listed on these sites or don’t have nearly enough reviews to get an objective picture.
Yeah, I’m fairly sure this building was paying for good reviews and paying tenants to take down bad reviews. In fact they did waive a hefty fee in exchange for me removing mine. I wish I had enough money to tell them to fuck themselves on that one, but I don’t.
Most of the reviews at this place were either glowingly positive or very negative, citing the same kinds of severe maintenance issues that we’d had there. But the catch was that you’d almost never see the negative reviews unless you sorted by most recent. A fact I learned after it was too late and we were already moved in and having terrible experiences there. Basically Google was helping them bury the reviews that made them look bad.
Also originally Google had silently hidden my very negative review. I tried removing a phrase about how I was sure the apartment complex was breaking the law and it magically showed back up… The whole damn thing is suspect. I no longer put any stock in reviews.
Edit: I just went looking back at the reviews for this building and I found out that Google removed the only small power the public has against fake reviews. The “not helpful” button was replaced with reaction emojis, all of which convey positive emotions. Fuck Google. They know they are helping shield bad businesses, they just want to keep clicks (ad dollars) flowing.
Yup, I’m pretty sure I’ve also seen some leasing offices offer gift cards or one time rent reduction in exchange for a positive review. Like I said, I’m pretty sure that’s against the sites’ rules but not technically illegal. I suppose you could file a complaint but good look having them take your side over that of a paying customer’s.
I just went looking back at the reviews for this building and I found out that Google removed the only small power the public has against fake reviews
Reporting is still an option, and it works. Literally just 3 days ago reported some inaccurate reviews at a place near where I work and I got the email last night they’d taken action, they’re gone now
What was the inaccuracy? I’ve had mixed results with reporting things to Google
Multiple 1 star reviews for a nearby business that complain it doesn’t do something that it doesn’t claim to do (bulk fuel delivery place people are complaining it’s not a gas station even though it doesn’t come up as one) was the most recent one I did.
I also got one removed last year because someone gave a 1-star review whining about a fee that you weren’t warned about if you were late, I sent in a picture of the big ass sign about it that’s been there for years
Something like this?
https://www.shitrentals.org/review/review-a-shit-rental
Check this out. Power to the people.
Cool idea, if you’re in Australia or New Zealand go complain about your shit landlord!
The gallows and guillotine have a nice easy solution for all that bullshit.
True, but you xan also ask for the number of the previous tenant?
I think you’re on to something…
Catch 22 for everyone trying to move out of their parent’s home when they specifically state the references can’t be family.
lie through your teeth, the landlord won’t hesitate to blatantly lie so neither should you.
oh no no mr landlord sir, this isn’t my dad, this is my “previous landlord”!
just ask a friend and lie
ALL
LEMONS
ARE
TASTY
References for renting? What sort of dystopia is that? I’ve never heard of that concept, luckily.
What country are you in? I thought landlord reference is the norm.
not in finland at least. never heard of that stuff
One apartment I lived in was rented out by a private landlord, and there we had the option to write a personal letter/application which would allow us to skip the queue if we matched what they were looking for. We had just become a family of three and they wanted more families with children so we were approved. That was completely voluntary though. In honesty, I think it’s kind of weird that we could jump the queue but we were no longer allowed to live in my student apartment so we jumped on it.
That was completely voluntary though
The problem with power imbalances is that they allow enforcing “completely voluntary” practices.
I know. That’s why I said it’s a bit weird that we could skip the queue. On the other hand, the fact that decades long queue times are necessary instead of more, affordable housing being built is also a problem.
One apartment you lived in? Or the only apartment youve lived in?
I’ve definitely never heard of it in Uranus.
Never heard of it in Croatia.
doesnt croatia have a really low percentage of people who live in rent (as opposed to owing the property or living with relatives eho own it)
not a thing i’ve ever heard of in sweden, either apartments are just expensive or you need to sign up for a waiting list and maintain your spot for like 7 years until you have the queue points needed for the apartment you want to rent
What? Seven years for an apartment? I know people that buy and sell their homes more often than that.
it’s usually not that extreme, but that’s how it is in the large cities.
More normal for an average city is probably like 3 years waiting, you’re expected to sign up before you have any intentions of moving out from your parents.
That’s wild.
Never heard about it in Norway
Not here (Switzerland) either.
I’m a Swede living in Denmark. Not a thing in Scandinavia, apparently.
I’m having to do that now. Three years prior renting needs to be accounted for. I left on very bad terms with my previous landlord but I had to give the information over because it showed up on my history check and they refused to let my application be complete without it. So we’ll see wtf is gonna happen…
I had a disagreement with my previous landlord. He included power in the rent (not uncommon here) and I have a home lab.
He was not happy with the electrical bill and accused me of mining Bitcoin.
Sir, this hardware is from 2010, and couldn’t possibly mine a single Bitcoin in the time it has remaining to run before it dies.
He threatened to evict me, I took his eviction threat documentation to a lawyer who basically told me that “this is not sufficient grounds to evict” (more or less he just laughed at how dumb it was), and I promptly ignored it. Moved out when my lease was up. There were a ton of other problems I won’t get into. When he showed it to new potential renters some showed up before the agent who was showing the place and we gave them a warning about the landlord. I’m sure someone rented it eventually, but hopefully we saved a couple of people from going through all that.
I actually like the idea of landlords covering electricity or at least a portion of it. It incentives them to install things like heat pumps which have a high up front cost but long term savings. If they aren’t sweating the long term loss then why would they upgrade?
Most places here pay for heating, not cooling. Heating is usually natural gas or similar, cooling by AC is up to the tenant, and there’s usually a premium in the summer paid to run AC when electricity is included.
Heat pumps are for heating too, not just cooling.
That’s sad. There could be so many reasons for disagreements. As long as you paid you shouldn’t be forced to do this. Best of luck.
Disagreement is a light way of putting it. 😅
It went full-on, lawyers-involved horseshit from her freaking out about trivial shit. So it’s a guarantee that her response to any inquiry will be negative. Fun!
Thanks for the kind words, I should find out later today whether she’s blocked me from getting a place.
It’s common in Germany to get a “reference” from your current landlord that basically just says “paid rent on time and didn’t set anything on fire”.
See, that seems reasonable.
It doesn’t say any more than it has to.
Huh. Here we have registries for people who habitually don’t pay on time, with a cooldown once they’re caught up. If you’re not in the registry it’s assumed that you’re good.
Don’t worry, we have that registry in Germany as well. And you have to pay to get your own data from them (although a GDPR request works once a year)
It is? I’m german and I’ve rented my entire life and never got anything like it nor needed anything like it to rent.
I had to present such slips several times.
But I’m living in a city where the queues for apartments is 50 people long.
Wait, you only have to give a reference for a place to rent? Here in Ireland (Dublin) you need a scan of your passport, government id, work reference, housing reference, and at least bank statements from the last three months.
Depends on the market. Like New York City is competitive, I think they demand references because they have plenty of options for tenants. Other places maybe not so much. Whatever people can get away with they will do.
What the actual fuck? You renting a basement apartment or applying for a mortgage?
Room or studio apartment.
https://www.daft.ie/for-rent/studio-apartment-1-dublin-20-dublin-20/5704336
“Verifiable reference’s essential Verifiable affordability essential”
The passport, government id, and work reference are all to make sure you can “afford” to live there.
It’s basically the same process. The ideal tenant is someone that can’t afford a mortgage by the slimmest of margins.
Hang the land
lordsleeches.
I’m going through the process right now in Kansas City Missouri and it seems like it varies from place to place. Leasing agencies seem to be the worst. One of these required everything you mention above except the passport scan, and it was 1.5 months of paycheck stubs from your employer.
Same with getting a job.
I was thinking the same. Let me interview non-management members of the team to see what working there is really like.
Life hack: lie, steal and manipulate. Or be a honest homeless person. It’s definitely not going to bother me.
J Roc says Photoshop your pay stubs and get a friend to give you references
Just stay at a Holiday Inn Express and bypass the whole system.
Some landlords will give good recommendations for shitty tenants, just so they can get rid of them.
One guy I bothered every day about his other tenant stomping across my ceiling. That landlord gave me a fantastic recommendation because he was tired of having to do any effort whatsoever instead of just receiving money for doing nothing.
I saw that tenant as I was moving out, “I don’t understand the problem, I always wore my indoor boots?” Fuck apartments lol.
Carpets help
Can confirm, had a friend rent a room in a house I was staying in (privately rented from the owner) after months of issues, he was given a glowing referee from myself and the owner, and swiftly ejected from the house. Guarantee it got him out the door a shitload quicker.
Oh no it’s worse than that. I have mandatory binding arbitration so I don’t really have rights. Mind you that’s after the application fees and paying for my own background check, commonly used to strong-arm you into accepting horrible terms.
It’s that or be homeless.
naybe its time to buy abandoned malls and convert them to dormitories with shared kitchens
You know, malls were initially envisioned as fully indoor planned communities. It didn’t survive long, but it was a way better concept
How is this weird, whoever has the power in a transaction is able to make their demands. Goes for anything that involves an exchange. Labour, housing, goods. This isn’t insightful.
It’s sarcasm.
I don’t think that really addresses the comment you’re responding to
The post is with a sarcastic tone. It is not actually saying that this is surprising or weird.
Yes, and I guess I took the post you responded to be aware of that, whilst expressing frustration with the initial post regardless - presumably because it phrased this as an action of class warfare rather than a feature common to all value-for-money exchanges where demand exceeds supply…
I’d say having the supply when demand exceeds supply in value-for-money exchanges implies a class hierarchy in and of itself.
As a landlord… I would love this.
If you’re a landlord then surely you have the power not to do this with your property or properties?
Or as Adam Smith would call you, a rent-seeker.
