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> If these agreements cut the rent the landlords could charge, they'd never sign them. If landlords believed these agreements cut the rent the landlords can ch

by zeveb 10y ago

> If these agreements cut the rent the landlords could charge, they'd never sign them. If landlords believed these agreements cut the rent the landlords can charge by more than they are kicked-back, they'd never sign them. I'm certainly not defending this sort of thing. But, given a competitive rental market, it's not something to worry overmuch about.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
A competitive rental market is something that rarely exists. In most of the cases I've heard of, the demand is much greater than supply, so the landlords are free to charge whatever and if you don't accept, there are 100 other people in line for the same apartment.
- mrep 10y ago
  Like you said, depends on the market. Here in Seattle, whenever one of my intern friends would move in, we would first tell them to look for apartments with wave/condo internet. 60$ a month, no contract or installation fees for 100 Mbit per second internet. It hasn't gone down once in that past 4 months nor ever slowed from that speed (I can also spend an extra 20$ a month to get 1 gbit per second).
mikeash 10y ago
Good point. However, nothing about these agreements makes anything fundamentally cheaper, it's just shuffling money around. In the best case, the kickbacks reduce rent, people's internet bills increase, and they pay the same. If the internet is cheaper because it's slow, then it could be cheaper and slower anywhere. Since none of this fundamentally cuts costs, you end up with a zero-sum game. There are four basic possibilities: either the ISP miscalculates and loses more money on kickbacks than they gain from renters, the landlord miscalculates and loses more money in rent than they gain from kickbacks, the renters miscalculate and lose more money on their internet bill (or lose more value due to having crappy internet) than they gain in rent savings, or everything manages to balance out perfectly and this is just a bunch of wasted effort. Since the renters are by far the party with the least information and the least ability to analyze the situation, it's highly likely that they're the ones who end up being screwed.

by zeveb 10y ago

TeMPOraL 10y ago

A competitive rental market is something that rarely exists. In most of the cases I've heard of, the demand is much greater than supply, so the landlords are free to charge whatever and if you don't accept, there are 100 other people in line for the same apartment.

mrep 10y ago
Like you said, depends on the market. Here in Seattle, whenever one of my intern friends would move in, we would first tell them to look for apartments with wave/condo internet. 60$ a month, no contract or installation fees for 100 Mbit per second internet. It hasn't gone down once in that past 4 months nor ever slowed from that speed (I can also spend an extra 20$ a month to get 1 gbit per second).

mikeash 10y ago

Good point. However, nothing about these agreements makes anything fundamentally cheaper, it's just shuffling money around. In the best case, the kickbacks reduce rent, people's internet bills increase, and they pay the same. If the internet is cheaper because it's slow, then it could be cheaper and slower anywhere. Since none of this fundamentally cuts costs, you end up with a zero-sum game. There are four basic possibilities: either the ISP miscalculates and loses more money on kickbacks than they gain from renters, the landlord miscalculates and loses more money in rent than they gain from kickbacks, the renters miscalculate and lose more money on their internet bill (or lose more value due to having crappy internet) than they gain in rent savings, or everything manages to balance out perfectly and this is just a bunch of wasted effort. Since the renters are by far the party with the least information and the least ability to analyze the situation, it's highly likely that they're the ones who end up being screwed.