
Cribspot (YC W15) is a search engine for college housing - timjones
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/23/cribspot/
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brettbl
My friend actually mentioned how useful this would be! One of the difficulties
they may face though, at least in a market like mine (Boulder, CO) may be
indexing and working with the housing that is already organized by rental
agencies. There's three large ones where I'm at and I cant imagine they would
make it very easy, especially if Cribspot wants to take some of the
responsibilities from the agencies, responsibility that the landlords pay the
agencies to take care of. It will be interesting to see how crib spot deals
with this aspect considering these agencies run so much housing around here

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timjones
I'm glad you think we're useful!

Our number one focus is solving the student problem. We don't intent to take
responsibilities away from these agencies, but rather to make it easier to
fulfill them. We make it easier for them to fill their properties faster at no
cost to them. Generally property management companies have received this very
well.

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tiffanygk
I am wondering how you are planning to handle the legality of subleasing and
enforcement, especially seeing as almost all landlords for college towns do
not allow subleasing, but it happens. Which also leads to an alarming amount
of subleasers skipping the last month of rent or stealing from the property
since they know they are living there in secret from the landlord and
therefore their rent collection is unenforceable. As a college renter this is
the biggest problem I would like to see fixed, given the 12 month lease for a
8 month school year and study abroad opportunities becoming commonplace.

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timjones
Sorry for missing this!

Right now, it is up to the student to make sure they abide by the rules set
forth by their landlord for subleasing. Typically this is just filling out a
form telling them who will be living in the property, and in some cases, an
additional fee. We would prefer to keep the legal responsibilities on the
student, but will work towards making it as easy as possible to facilitate
transactions and contracts with the subletter online.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

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chralieboy
A couple of questions that came to me after reading through this:

The interface looks great, so much better than Craigslist. What advantages do
you provide for landlords that Craigslist/Lovely do not have?

I'm guessing that college students are a much less attractive market. Youth
means no/less credit or rental history, students have lower income, and are
more likely to damage property. As a landlord, why would I want to
specifically target a less-desirable market? Or do you think that, in large
college towns, they've already accepted those conditions?

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timjones
Thanks for the compliments on the interface!

College students don't use Lovely for off-campus housing - the best properties
don't need to be advertised beyond a property manager's website. We've been
more heavily focused on solving the renter's needs to-date, and focus on
bubbling up those properties that other websites don't have. For now, we
provide free leads to property managers, so that value is obvious.

College landlords often rely on co-signers (parents), and many perform
background checks on both the renter and the co-signer. There are certain
areas in college towns where literally every property is rented by a student.
If a landlord purchases a house in that area, they understand that their
renters will almost definitely be students. Demand for these properties is so
high that they are almost guaranteed 100% occupancy every year, so it's still
an attractive investment.

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padobson
I'd love to know how you have gone about getting the initial sublets on there.
Was it scraping other sites like Zillow and Craigslist?

I just posted one of my apartments expecting to be the only one in the area
(I'm the only host on Airbnb in my city limits), and there were already four
other apartments there.

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timjones
All sublets are posted by our users. We haven't had to scrape from other
sources.

Airbnb doesn't typically have a ton of supply in most of our smaller college
towns. We get a lot of sublets posted partially because there aren't a lot of
great resources outside of Craigslist.

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gatsby
Congrats on the launch!

Has it been challenging to get landlords to agree to a common rental
application?

What's the plan to differentiate from companies like cozy.co in the
application/leases/rent-payment space?

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timjones
Thanks!

As with anything, it's been challenging for some and rather easy for others.
Our success so far is partially due to the fact that we have existing
relationships with a ton of landlords. They know we send them leads and
already trust our brand.

Most landlords in our markets don't use much software. We're primarily renter-
focused, starting with lightweight tools focused on helping smaller property
managers. Again, our existing relationships and the fact that we're already
generating a significant percentage of their leads really help our ability to
get property managers on board.

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mikesilvis
Congrats Tim! Looking forward to seeing what is coming next!

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timjones
Thanks Mike!

