

Plead HN: Build a functional apartment finding website. - photon_off

Make me a website that does the following and I promise you unbound riches:<p>- To select an area: Allow me to draw a region on a map.  No dropdown of giant arbitrary areas.  No checkboxes of giant arbitrary areas.  No keyword search to determine area.  Just let me draw a region.  Even a rectangle will do.<p>- To select a price: Allow me to enter a price range easily.  Not a dropdown with $500 price chunks.  Not textboxes where I need to type in numbers.  Just give me a slider with $100 increments.<p>- To view the results:  Show me the results.  Optionally, let me sort and filter.  Bonus points for showing number of results that have each characteristic (eg: doorman (5), outdoor space (15), etc).  Do not make me provide an email address to see results.<p>- Show me, within a block, where the listing is.  I am planning on living there.<p>- To trust you: Not 100% uppercase. Not as if every listing is the best listing on the planet.  No exclamation points, asterisks, triangles, trapezoids, or polygons of any sort.<p>- The big one: Have up to date listings.  I don't know how you will do this, but if you do it, you'll be rich.<p>Hipmunk for apartments.  Somebody get on this.  PLEASE.
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thingie
UI is the easy part. The listings that are accurate, honest and up to date are
hard. Do you want to become a real estate company as well, hire your own
agents, pick up the phones, take customers for the visits and so on? Or you
need to provide a service that these companies (and some landlords, perhaps)
want to use, in the right way.

Why would they give you out the exact address? A competing real estate company
(not one, three, more) would immediately contact the landlord and offer him a
better deal. Why would you list the price correctly, if you can hide some
additional fees in the comment, stay 'technically' correct and look more
attractive in the search?

I work on a service like this, we are quite rich (well, as a company, I'm just
an employee), but we really can't do what you want. I'd like to, I don't like
to use the service much, it's not bad itself, but it doesn't help you from
dealing with the real estate agents and if I say that they are all liars and
frauds, I'm not exaggerating at all.

(But we're in eastern Europe, things are perhaps different in America.)

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dholowiski
What you describe sounds like an industry based on a pre-internet business
model, waiting to be disrupted.

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jaredsohn
Here are some sites that have some similarity to what you described:

<http://www.padmapper.com/>

<http://www.walkscore.com/apartments/>

<http://hotpads.com/>

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revorad
How is Padmapper able to list Craigslist properties without getting banned?

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tryitnow
Sorry, I just don't see this as a big need. I mean looking for an apartment at
the going rate is inconvenient, but I just don't see why the startup ecosystem
should support yet another variant on this.

Here's my algorithm for looking for an apartment.

1) If I want to rent in a major, professionally managed building, just take
one weekend and drive around the area I would like to live in. Honestly, it's
old fashioned, but you're going to need to do this at some point.

2) If I am interested in renting from a small scale landlord or just renting a
room then I use CL (and so apparently do all the startups in this space).

The apartment market is pretty darned efficient. If you think you've got a
bargain, just wait. Maybe it will be mold, or noisy plumbing or bad neighbors,
but whatever it is a problem will arise that will teach you just how efficient
markets can be.

I just don't see the need for yet another apartment search site. Would it be
nice? Sure. But would it solve a major pressing pain point? At least not for
me and probably not for enough people that the business can get paid by users
or advertisers and create a sustainable business model.

Now I do think the way we rent is fundamentally broken, but that's a business
model problem that needs to address a broad set of pain points of renters and
landlords.

For example, I think there are a lot of people in this economy who should be
renting rooms out, but aren't (e.g. if you're unemployed and relying on my tax
dollars to fund you AND you have a 4 bedroom house in a large MSA - maybe look
into getting rid of some of your junk and monetizing your square footage).

Now if you're still reading this, you're probably coming up with a lot of
reasons why someone just can't rent some of the excess square footage in their
house. Now come up with a business model that honestly addresses all those
reasons _, then execute that model. Then get rich. Thanks.

_ some potential solutions: better screening of applicants, semi-co-housing
like solutions, helping homeowners move out of unnecessarily large homes and
downsizing to smaller residences while renting out their former residences
(could be useful for retirees who aren't willing to sell in this market, but
want to downsize), help families set up au pair arrangements where part of the
rent is paid for in services (this could alleviate the concerns of families
with children who want to rent out a room, but are worried because they have
kids). Bottom line - Americans have WAY too much square footage plus there's
an emerging trend toward more minimalistic downsized lifestyles both for
economic and cultural reasons. I don't know of any business that is helping
people monetize their square footage.

If you've got any ideas+skills contact me and maybe I can help you raise some
money.

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genieyclo
<http://padmapper.com>

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Axsuul
awesome site

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killion
<http://www.apartmentlist.com> has most of those features. Plus it adds a
recommender to help you sort through your search. It doesn't scrape Craigslist
so the quality of the apartments is really high, and it still has 1.9 million
of them.

It just launched in September, so expect to see more of those features you are
looking for to go live soon.

~~~
rileywatkins
Was just checking out apartmentlist.com for the first time:

"We need you to connect with Facebook so we can work our magic."

Why in the world...?

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Mankhool
There is nothing that can force landlords who are too technophobic or just too
lazy to post relevant photos, an exact address, and complete information to
change their ways. Ver 2.0 of the apartment hunt may be coming, but not until
Gen 2.0 are managing buildings.

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Umofomia
RentHop (YC S09) has most of these features, especially the one allowing you
to draw the region on a map. The caveat is that they only serve the New York
City market. <http://www.renthop.com/>

~~~
benatkin
So does HotPads: the lasso below the zoom widget. <http://hotpads.com/>

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benatkin
> Just let me draw a region.

> Not textboxes where I need to type in numbers. Just give me a slider with
> $100 increments.

You insist on specificity in one place, and you reject it in another place.

Your requirements aren't consistent.

Hotpads is pretty great. It has a lasso tool, and a more powerful price
selection tool (the text fields). I suggest giving it another look. If it
isn't quite up to par, Hotpads would be quicker in delivering what you want
than a newcomer. I don't buy that Hotpads _just doesn't get it_.

~~~
photon_off
I cannot be consistent with apples to oranges. If I required a specificity of
10 feet in my region selection, what then would be the "consistent"
specificity of the rent slider? $1, $10, $100?

Also, inconsistent requirements != inconsistent UI.

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ericd
Yeah, I think your specs are pretty good, and there's no universal level of
specificity, just what makes sense where. I wrote PadMapper - is there
anything you'd like to see improved? Noted on the polygons.

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shioyama
There's a site like that for Japan, unfortunately only in Japanese though:

<http://www.datadata.jp/chintai/>

You select a price range & other conditions, and a spot on the map with a
radius, and it shows you all places that fit those requirements in that area.
Very simple, very useful.

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vilya
Sounds exactly like Globrix: <http://www.globrix.com/>

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fumanshu
I'd also checkout <http://www.rentenna.com/>

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neoveller
Also this: <http://livelovely.com/>

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georgespencer
My company has been working on this since June. Email me.

George@rentify.com

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hRedBeard
try newpad.ca (in Canada)

