ByShubhankar Kulkarni
How to create a system to make small investments in real estate?
2 years ago
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Challenge
Miloš Stanković Jun 09, 2022
A way to automatize recommendations of renters for landlords
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The best for-rent apartments are usually given only to people who know the landlord or to someone the landlord has a mutual friend with. The landlords feel safer with the property and that the renters won't cause damage to furniture, and they won't hassle the other neighbours in the building with noise.
These prime apartments are even given under market price just for the security of having a somewhat known person living in them.
Yet, this is not a process you can lean on when you're in need of an apartment, as it's inefficient, unreliable, and time-consuming.
One could post messages of their apartment need on social media, messengers as statuses, yet the reach of those is in question. Also, whether the person has social media.
What is the way to automatize this familiarity based recommendation system for landlords to find reliable renters. And renters to find the best apartments on the cheap?
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Creative contributions
App for linking the renter and landlord via a mutual connection
A service, that would work on principles of LinkedIn, of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd line of connections, and provide anonymous prompts for the middle man whether he wants to recommend the renter.
Have it draw everyone you have on emails as your contacts in order for it not to have the hassle of adding and accepting people for yet another platform. You can then just go over the list and tick untick people you want to associate with or not. Completely optional though. They need to install the app too in order for them to appear on your listing, of course.
- The renter sends out a signal that he is looking for an apartment, and sets out filters that he is looking for.
- The landlords who are in search for a reliable renter, put their apartment on the app as well, fill in the description according to the filters. But the apartments are not public on the app, nor photos, nothing. They just need to be screened for quality by the app's employers.
- In case of a first connection match, the app just notifies the two parties.
In case there isn't a direct match, the app can find any mutual connections between the renter and the landlord and annonymously ask them whether they are ready to recommend the renter to the landlord. They can be able to view the appartment's photos before giving the nod.
You don't get to see anyone's else connections for this principle of anonymity to work. So that people won't get mad if you're not willing to recommend them for an appartment.
If the sides complete the deal, the identity of the middle man gets revealed to the parties.
The question is, what makes the middle man want to be on the app? They can be incentivized by getting a small percentage of a month's rent, after six months. That is if the recommendation he gave held the test of time. But helping someone with such a big thing like finding a great place to live would be satisfying in itself and would earn social points.
A social media platform like Facebook or LinkedIn could just extend their business model to automatize this process. But there is a way for a new app to do this.
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General comments
jnikola2 years ago
When I was on my exchange program in Spain, I rented a small apartment in the city centre. I found it in the Facebook group. The person who posted it wanted to first meet me via Skype and get to know me. We met, connected and I got the apartment. A few months later, when my program was somewhat in the middle, I received a message from my landlord to find new people who will enter the apartment right after me. It was actually in the contract I signed, clearly stating that my deposit will not be returned if I don't find someone. I talked to all my friends and posted an apartment in the Facebook group. I called some people who were interested to make sure they are really interested and coming. Only when I left and the next person came, I was calm and I got my deposit a few weeks after. Although stressful, I think this is a good way of automatizing recommendations - by making it obligatory to find your successor.
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Miloš Stanković2 years ago
J. Nikola What incentivizes the leaving tenant to recommend a good future tenant? Besides his own good will.
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jnikola2 years ago
Miloš Stanković I think the only thing that matters to you in this situation is that a person entering after you leaves some kind of assurance that it will actually enter the apartment (or else you lose your deposit since it was a part of the contract). If you get a feeling it's a trustable person and you don't need to look further, it's a good sign it could be a good tenant. On the other hand, a person signing a contract like this and paying a high deposit will do everything to fulfil the contract and get a deposit back.
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