
Show HN: Properties to rent - No agent fees, no dead listings, no risk - dazbradbury
http://www.openrent.co.uk/properties-to-rent/london?term=London&lngn=-0.127683100000013&latn=51.5073346&within=24
======
rheide
I love it! Estate agents in London are a royal pain. If this gets rid of them
I will be extremely grateful. You are improving the world, sir.

Suggestion: some (most) apartments require users to give references. How about
allowing users to verify themselves on the site so they don't have to provide
references for properties they want to rent. Could include some warranty
service for people posting apartments that make use of this arrangement.
(tl;dr: make it more like airbnb).

~~~
dazbradbury
Thanks! Our aim is most certainly to save tenants and landlords vast sums of
money, as well as improve the rental market itself. We've already helped
tenants and landlords save tens of thousands of pounds, but we're definitely
not stopping there. If the result is letting agents being eradicated, then I
don't think many people will be too upset!

Regarding references - this is something we would definitely work towards.
Ideally we could verify enough information digitally that landlords don't ask
for the further references, but right now we don't have the capital to offer
the warranty. For now, we just make references much cheaper (£20), rather than
paying an agency hundreds of pounds.

------
retube
Here's why a landlord will pay a reputable estate agent a 10% fee. They will:

\- market the property on places like rightmove, findaproperty etc

\- show prospective tenants around (so you don't have to take time off work)

\- take pictures, measurements and construct floor plans

\- do credit, CRB and reference checks

\- provide a boilerplate tenancy agreement (which you can amend as you like)

\- sort out posting of deposits to the Tenancy Deposit Scheme

\- collect the rent

The amount of time and hassle all this saves is a lot... Of course there are
crummy agents so do your research.

Incidently - your "no risk" claim is a worrying one and suggests you don't
know much about the lettings business.

~~~
dazbradbury
Here's what OpenRent offers (take a look here:
<http://www.openrent.co.uk/landlords>):

\- We'll market the property on places like rightmove, findaproperty etc

\- We'll do credit, CRB and reference checks

\- We'll provide a boilerplate tenancy agreement (which you can amend as you
like), AND we'll provide a digital agreement for online signatures.

\- We'll sort out posting of deposits to the Tenancy Deposit Scheme

\- We'll tell tenants where and when to pay the rent. ie. A standing order
into the landlord's bank account, but we don't collect it as such.

What we don't do:

\- The viewings. Obviously this is a huge cost saving that we can pass onto
the tenants and landlords, but also, tenants _like_ meeting the landlord, and
landlords like meeting their prospective tenants. Who better to show you
round?

~~~
mijail
Super good looking site! From my understanding you are an agent that does
everything except the showing. I think your last point is kind of key and may
need to be fleshed out more. I agree that tenants like meeting the landlord,
however, landlord may like meeting tenants but they usually are unable to.
Landlords are in the business of owning property. They use a service provider
like brokers to make their life more convenient, so they can focus on the core
of their business. The first few points are administrative tasks the real
burden is to schedule appointments and show up for appointments that are
usually a waste of time (that's why brokers are bitter!)Perhaps facilitating
the different aspect of these appointments for landlords can help disrupt the
status quo.

------
anovikov
Why is almost all housing in London so shitty? It was my big shock when i
first came there. Almost all except the very top of the market (over 2000GBP
per week, and there are few flats that expensive) appear so terrible... Is
that only London or all of the country is like that? Why? Something like tax
laws making it prohibitive to renovate housing? Why there is still a lot of
100+ years old rotten houses in London, definitely bearing no historical
significance, their planning clearly showing they were build before
electricity? I was very surprised since i came from a country many times
poorer than the U.K. and yet the housing stock looks so much better there.

~~~
barking
I prefer older houses, they're usually better soundproofed for starters and
have higher ceilings and sash windows which provide better ventilation. The
high cost in London is simply because of the demand.

~~~
anovikov
I am not complaining about the costs, that is okay. But overwhelming majority
of housing is in really terrible condition, the one that covers almost all of
the market except the very top. Other places i used to live in, those with
20-50% of U.K.'s per capita GDP, have much better housing, new and old one.

~~~
NickPollard
As someone living in London, I would generally agree with this - compared to a
lot of places, London does seem to have a lot of housing in quite bad repair.

To take a wild guess why, I would suggest two factors: 1) The housing stock is
old compared to a lot of places, so much of it needs modernization and
renovation 2) The lack of space to expand (plus restrictions on greenfield
developments) means new housing is limited, so there is not much competition
to existing landlords. Why spend thousands of £ on upgrading your property if
you can leave it as it is and still charge high rents?

~~~
anovikov
Yes probably something about that - restrictions on new development and a lot
of other red tape which all but prohibits complete renovations of entire
houses and/or new construction. Because otherwise, in a country with that much
fluid capital, you would have a lot of good housing (and land isn't a problem,
as most of those houses are just 3-5 storeys, and public transportation is in
perfect shape meaning you could squeeze in a lot more people).

Even the very center, places like Knightsbridge, are almost entirely old,
rotten shit.

~~~
justincormack
We like those old houses. We do not consider them shit. The entire character
of the city comes from its history embodied in its buildings. Most of the new
homes are total shit, and won't last nearly as long as the old stuff.

------
twelvechairs
To provide a bit of constructive criticism, I don't think your front page (the
real front page, not the link here) describes quickly and clearly what exactly
you do. I sort of assumed it was just direct contact between landlord and
tenant (like moveflat, gumtree, craigslist, etc.) and went straight into
searching. The only indication of the other side of what you do (a streamlined
version of some, but not all of a traditional lettings agent's services) is in
the 'for landlords' box (for the very few who read that far down), or in the
'learn more' pages. I want to know the whole process of what I'm in for (as a
prospective tenant or landlord) - i think you definitely need to flag this
side of things to your users right at the top of the front page.

Also - the word 'open' might have thrown me, as I guess I was expecting from
the name something a bit more free and user-curated rather than a service-
driven company.

[edit] that said - I think what you are doing is great and I'd love to see
this kind of streamlined and professional service without a huge cost take
over alot of the business of traditional agents.

~~~
dazbradbury
Yep - I have to say we totally agree with this and am just trying to work out
how we can make such a change so it's informative, but not overwhelming for
repeat users.

Getting to the data fast is important, but understanding why we're a vast
improvement over the alternatives is clearly just as important!

This is something we need to get right, and we will think about how we can
portray it more clearly.

------
alexchamberlain
I'm looking for a flat in London at the moment; I want a 1 bedroom flat, but
not a studio flat. You can't search for that using your UI.

~~~
dazbradbury
Noted - we added studio / flat share options very recently, and just need to
update the search page. Will add that to our short-term TODO list!

~~~
mietek
Please make sure searching for 1-bed apartments does not show studios and
flatshares. This is absolutely infuriating on many other sites.

~~~
alexchamberlain
I have to agree; it has to be the most frustrating part of looking for a flat.

Another thing I hate is no plan. Pictures are great, but without a plan it's
really hard to imagine how big (small) rooms are.

------
citricsquid
I like the site but the map at the top of the search, can that be collapsible?
It feels very suffocating; I don't care about the map but I have to have it
take up ~50% of the screen with the results (what I do care about) listed
below! Also when updating the filters it's so fast (yay!) that the "loading"
screen flashes up for only a few ms so it appears like the screen is flashing
black. And my final thing: if you view a listing via the search it should give
the option to "go back to search" without needing to use back. Other than that
it's great!

------
vladoh
I really like the interface - very clear and simple. I wish I had something
like this for Munich, where the search for apartments is really a nightmare.
What are your plans for expanding your service?

------
stef25
On your site it says "our service now includes: Listing on our site as well as
Rightmove, Zoopla, FindaProperty, Globrix, PrimeLocation and more to advertise
your property to millions of high quality tenants".

Does this mean that a posting on your site also appears on those portals? If
so, how do you do this technically?

~~~
dazbradbury
That is correct - the major portals have various data feeds for accepting
property listings from agents. We can use those to list as we are ourselves
registered agents - just much more affordable ones!

------
dailygrind
Excellent domain and the website also looks nice. Can you give us some
background about the technology used?

~~~
dazbradbury
Thanks!

Sure - we're a .Net (MVC) back-end, running on Appharbor (those guys have been
awesome).

Hopefully we can handle the HN-Effect we're currently experiencing...

~~~
nopassrecover
Interested to see how Appharbor goes. I've been using a .NET MVC-based setup
to achieve a similar thing here in Aus (for friends only currently as I've
been relying on scraping for data). Really impressed with your customer dev
efforts by the way.

------
chris_wot
Wow! This has really come along since last time! I'm very, very impressed with
what you have done here!

------
stef25
Looks very nice, I love these type of real estate projects. I've heard before
that agencies in the UK are a royal pain, but surely this isn't the first
website that tried to bypass them. What sets this one apart?

------
jordn
This is great to see. Not only because I know how much of a painful, dated
system most lettings have to go through but also because you're a small
british startup taking on a few, dull big players and seemingly getting
somewhere.

When I looked a this problem before, it appeared to me that Rightmove etc.
wouldn't let normal landlords list their own properties because of The
Property Misdescriptions Act put too high a risk on the listing if there were
some false claims and basically an estate agent was essentially required as a
guarantor that it's legit. How do you get around that?

------
joefarish
Do you have any plans to provide historic pricing data? At the moment It seems
like only the letting agents really know what the 'market rates' are and
naturally this puts them at an advantage.

~~~
dazbradbury
Sure - we'd see no reason to hide that. In fact, it's the kind of data that
landlords will find very useful when pricing their property, so it's clearly
in our interests to provide it.

Having said that, at our current scale, it's not going to be interesting
enough. Once we hit the right numbers, and I'm not sure what that is yet, we
will look to release these figures and create a tool for landlords.

------
tocomment
How are you doing marketing for this? How do you get over the chicken and egg
problem? E.g., buyers won't come unless sellers are listing, and sellers won't
list unless there are buyers.

~~~
dazbradbury
Take a look at our landlords about page:

<http://www.openrent.co.uk/landlords>

We offer a full service (beyond a simple marketplace) to attract our customers
(landlords), and overcome the chicken and egg problem by advertising on
already popular portals.

~~~
tocomment
The services for landlords are really amazing. Have you considered expanding
to the US?

~~~
tocomment
I was thinking of doing something like this but for niche retail rentals in
the US. Could I bounce some questions off of you?

~~~
dazbradbury
Sure, you can get me on [redacted].

Note - I may not get back to you tonight, but will endeavour to do so in the
next 24 hours.

------
Silhouette
Sounds like a great idea to me. The rental market here in Cambridge is always
fairly vibrant for the size of the city, but the agencies don't seem to make
many friends with either landlords or tenants. I expect you could make a very
tidy profit (and a lot of friends :-)) disrupting their market!

It's probably quite seasonal in a place like this, but on the flip side, if
you could land a good deal with the universities to help place all their
living-out students, that might be worth a quid or two.

------
xoail
I really like this idea. I once had a similar idea for the US market and did
quite a bit of research. I spoke to bunch realestate agents about it and
almost all give me thumbs down. They were probably afraid technology could
ruined their career but some of the points they shared where eye opening. It
only made me realize that unless one of those biggest realestate firms back
you in this pursuit, it will be hard as hell to get all these realestate
agents out of jobs.

------
r4vik
Good stuff @dazbradbury, you've got 100x more inventory than the last time I
looked, how did you pull it off?

Big partnership or have you started scraping (doesn't look like it)?

~~~
dazbradbury
Nope - have just been getting out there and speaking to landlords. Marketing
has been our main focus, and will continue to be as we grow.

No scraping as we want to ensure our properties are all live and we have a
relationship (albeit a digital one) with our landlords. It also means we can
add _a lot_ of value.

~~~
chris_wot
Fellas, when are you releasing in Australia?!?

------
volpav
I like it. My 2 cents regarding the UI:

1\. Labels under the filter area look like buttons, I always want to click one
of them :-)

2\. The "sticky" top with map and filters and the scrolling list at the bottom
I think not the best UX decision. I have a relatively small screen (1028x1024)
and I almost don't see the list. Maybe the solution would be to be able to
collapse the filters and map (and bring the map by clicking on the map icon
from the listing).

~~~
volpav
One more thing: it seems like the filters area sometimes overlays the footer
(on my screen) so I'm not able to click any of the links at the bottom before
the cursor reaches the (imaginary) border between filters and list.

------
ianpri
Great site and as mentioned before, an industry ripe for the picking. One
thing that would be great is if zooming out on the map increased the search
distance on the results - searched for Leytonstone (no results) and scanned
around/zoomed out looking for other properties.

------
kgogolek
Are you guys considering foing something similar for selling properties? It's
a standard in a lot of EU countries to sell the houses without the agents etc.
I've always been really surprised this model does not apply in UK.

------
jpdoctor
As for the US: The entire realtor system needs to die a quick death. It is
anti-competitive and is engineered to take advantage of noobs, both to housing
and markets in general.

If there is any doubt, this publication was published by the chief economist
of the National Association for Realtors at the height of the housing bubble:
[http://www.amazon.com/Real-Estate-Boom-Will-
Bust/dp/03855143...](http://www.amazon.com/Real-Estate-Boom-Will-
Bust/dp/0385514352)

Edit: There is an important "not" missing from the html anchor.

------
kgogolek
really nice site. UK needs something tool like this, especially in this
market. The agent fees are ridic. Good luck with your project!

~~~
dazbradbury
Co-Founder here.

Thanks for your comments. We've already helped tenants and landlords save tens
of thousands of pounds, now we're just looking to scale up and help even more!

~~~
sdoering
Something like this would have helped me tremendously, when I came to Hamburg,
Germany nearly 4 years ago. I really love the idea and hope, that this will
spread.

how do you keep agents out? what if the register as owners? agent-fees are a
pain - not only in the UK. So hope someday you will make the
internationalization-jump.

~~~
dazbradbury
We have a few systems in place to stop agents, and have had to make the
decision to delist many properties based on this.

I don't want to elaborate too much and help agents circumvent our systems, but
essentially there isn't too much motivation for agents to list.

We advertise as having no agent fees, and as such, it breaks the agents model
of charging fees. This disincentivises most agents. Furthermore, tenants don't
want to pay fees when they find out they don't have to...

~~~
Datonomics
Just curious, how do agent fees normally work in London?

~~~
dazbradbury
For a "tenant find" service, agents normally charge landlords between 5% and
15% of the annual rent. They will then add on charges for deposit handling,
contract drafting, referencing, etc... All fixed charges at the £30-£150 mark
each.

To tenants, agents will charge similar fees, normally in the region of
hundreds of pounds. This will cover referencing and general "admin".

It is these fees we are combating against - and will hopefully be able to
eradicate.

Agents will also offer a "fully managed service" for between 5% and 15% of the
rent per month, but that is not something we're tackling at the moment...

~~~
sdoering
Thanks for your elaborate answers. here in Germany the fees are sometimes in
the range of 1 - 2 monthly rates. The last one is the maximum allowed value by
law. But, as you have to pay a damage deposit to your new landlord as well,
this might add up in cost around 5 monthly rents. OK, if everything goes well,
the damage deposit returns to your valet, once you move again, but that is a
lot of money to have at hand upfront.

So a service like this will help a lot of people - as said before.

------
cheza
Great site!

FYI, you have a small typo on the FAQ page:

"OpenRent are here to ease the administrative burdon and reduce costs." Should
be "burden"

~~~
dazbradbury
Good spot, and thanks for telling us! Have updated it for inclusion in our
next release (once we've ridden the HN wave.)

------
VBprogrammer
This appears to be a UK based site so why on earth are the distance units in
Kilometres?

~~~
justincormack
Because we are metric in the Uk.

What's more odd is distances from London for things in London. Presumably from
some bogus centre.

~~~
VBprogrammer
Distances and speeds on our road system are always measured in miles. As such
most British people generally have a much stronger intuition of Miles than
they do Kilometres (except strangely runners who quite often use Kilometres).

~~~
justincormack
Maybe it depends if you have a car. Runners, cyclists, people who go by train,
people who travel to Europe, technical people all use km. I wouldn't have ever
thought of using miles on a website...

------
arb99
Looks good. Are (some of) the current listings on there fetched from other
sites?

~~~
dazbradbury
Nope - they are all listed by OpenRent landlords. We don't scrape other sites.

------
lhnz
Great, but I'm looking for a flat share. Do you do those?

~~~
sdfjkl
I see lots of flat shares listed, but there doesn't seem to be a filter for
them, which would be useful.

