6 ms·

How a friend outsourced his apartment hunt (and saved 30 hours)

86 points by faulkner8 16y ago

faulkner8 16y ago
I sort of watched over his shoulder as he went through this process and it was quite amazing to observe. The guy he ended up working with, for $3 an hour, was quite sharp and motivated. When you think of the 30 hours he saved and the fact that you spend $1000+ on an apartment, the $90 spent is absolutely nothing.
- pavel_lishin 16y ago
  I'm wondering where the guy he hired lives, and what the economy is like there.
  - jey 16y ago
    It appears to be a Persian name.
  - faulkner8 16y ago
    The guy he hired was in a middle eastern country.
pixelbath 16y ago
Sorry if this sounds trollish, but Shahan was doing "jobs Americans don't want to do." Not only is this a good idea online, you can also hire domestic (local) concierge services to run errands for you during the day. My mother-in-law successfully runs such a business.
- faulkner8 16y ago
  In addition to individuals who do this, there are also online services that bids out local concierge services. I know that Chris (the guy who wrote the linked post) has used TaskRabbit (http://taskrabbit.com http://taskrabbit.com). I'm going to try to get him to do a post about that experience as well.
  - enjo 16y ago
    Are there any competitors to this? I'd love something like that in Denver.
ig1 16y ago
I'd happily pay for this sort of service, but but don't want to deal with the overhead of having to post on odesk and pick someone suitable (plus the hassle if they're not very good at it). It would be good if there was a more specialist online marketplace for this sort of task which reduce those overheads.
- DenisM 16y ago
  Well, you want a majordomo - someone who will hire and supervise staff. Alas, the problem is recursive - how do you hire and supervise a majordomo?
- saurik 16y ago
  Maybe you can outsource that task to odesk. ;P
- jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
  for apartment hunting or for other types of things.
PStamatiou 16y ago
This is what Noah Kagan <okdork.com> did when looking for his SF apartment.
motters 16y ago
It sounds like a good idea, and something I might try in future apartment searches because in previous jobs it has always taken quite some time to find a desirable place to live. However, there are some niggles at the back of my mind - or perhaps a little Stallman on my shoulder. Translated into UK pounds $3 per hour would certainly be below minimum wage. Is it really a good idea to encourage people to lock themselves into poverty wages? If I can satisfy myself that I'm not actually creating more poverty then perhaps this strategy is worth trying.
- faulkner8 16y ago
  Actually the guy who Chris ended up using was based in a middle eastern country. The average wage there is $15/day, so $3 per hour is a significant upgrade.
- paulgb 16y ago
  If someone is willing to work for $3 an hour, it's because they can't find work they'd be willing to do for $4. I'm all for genuine attempts to alleviate poverty, but the poor should be allowed to decide what is in their best interest.
zupatol 16y ago
Unfortunately this is of no help to me. Here in Geneva, Switzerland, the problem is not choosing the apartment, but being chosen among all the other people who want the same apartment you do. I've seen people stand in line just to visit one apartment. I hear there are even worse places than Geneva for finding an apartment. Businesses have sprang up to help people find apartments, so it is possible to outsource your apartment hunt too, but it costs much more than 90$.
- nagrom 16y ago
  This is absolutely true. I am moving to CERN this weekend and found that securing somewhere to live was extremely stressful, not to mention expensive. I am actually surprised that, given that housing is a basic human need, there is no mass-market apartment-finding company that takes all the horrible awkward work out of finding an apartment and makes it easy and convenient. I've no idea how you'd do it - maybe build entire neighbourhoods based on typical lifestyle choice sets and market those individually. Maybe something like that exists in the US? I've never seen someone successfully do that in Europe.
  - enjo 16y ago
    Why is housing so hard to come by anyways? I'm just curious.. it would seem like someone would rise to fill that need if people are literally standing in line to be interviewed for the chance to rent a place.
    - draebek 16y ago
      If I had to guess I'd say the demand is for "housing within N kilometers of point X" and there is nowhere left to build housing in that area, whether because of physical constraints or legal/regulatory constraints (e.g. can't get a permit to demolish that block and put up a dense high rise). (Edit for non-USA-ian units, since we were talking about Geneva.)
    - mattm 16y ago
      In my city, the average family income is about $60k but housing is expensive to buy. One-bedroom condo's start at $200k so a lot of people rent. Unfortunately, since developers can earn so much by selling units instead of renting them, they all veer towards that. I'm sure rent control plays a factor too. Rent can only be increased by 3% per year or something like that. End result, there hasn't been a new building built for rental apartments in my city for over 30 years.
tryke 16y ago
For comedy value, there should be a follow-up article involving the "Casual Encounters" section of Craigslist. 2600 magazine recently had an article about a Bayesian filter for getting the spam out of the "w4m" section. A human could weed out rejections, spambots, and prostitutes, putting the rest into a sortable spreadsheet.
apower 16y ago
Isn't that what wife is for?
- apower 16y ago
  People here have no sense of humor.
  - zackattack 16y ago
    Nah, your comment wasn't funny.
iamdave 16y ago
I'm actually quite interested to see a discourse on the impacts that these sort of ultra low-priced outsourced products have had on concierge and virtual assistant services in small town USA. Sort of along the same vein of how designers formed an ad hoc association of how they felt regarding spec-work and design centric crowdsourcing sites like 99designs. Does anyone have any articles on this?
nitrogen 16y ago
I was very close to trying this for a recent apartment search, but I finally landed a place just before I crossed the threshold. I spent quite a bit more than 30 hours cumulatively, though, so I could have saved a lot of time for more productive tasks.
ciupicri 16y ago
Shouldn't this be the job of a real estate agency? You ask them to find an apartment matching your criteria and they find it (in their database with the current offers).
jey 16y ago
Anyone going to systematize this and create a curated list of vetted apartments for a fee? Maybe something like $9 for a month of access to one geographic area.
- ericd 16y ago
  I've considered it briefly for PadMapper (http://www.padmapper.com http://www.padmapper.com). It would be very expensive to do for all cities, though - the volumes of listings they would have to look through are pretty enormous if you were doing it generally. One of the big things you get out of this is that you tell the person exactly what you want, and they throw away everything else. There might be some way to make it work, though.
  - acgourley 16y ago
    PadMapper really is a good way to find listings on CL, if anyone needs it. Was my go-to for finding places in SF last year.
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    I used PadMapper to find my new place a few months ago. Thanks again for all your work on it.
    - ericd 16y ago
      You're welcome, if you have any feedback, I'd love to hear it.
  - jey 16y ago
    You wouldn't do it for all geographic areas, just targeted ones that have sufficient demand to make it worthwhile.
  - keeptrying 16y ago
    Padmapper rocks! Thank you for all your work on it.
  - mistermann 16y ago
nandemo 16y ago
I wanted a place that has an outdoor space (a yard, a porch, a balcony, or a deck), hardwood floors, laundry (in unit, in building, or close by), a very specific location (to balance three commutes), lots of light, and all of the typical apartment requirements (right size, budget, start date, etc). This was clearly the job for a human, Er, no, this is clearly a job for a real-estate-specific website with a search form. The part that only a human can do is to actually visit the apartments but you can't outsource　that, at least not to a remote person. Now, why in the world do people use craigslist by default instead of a better website? It should be beneficial to tenants -- who will save time and money -- and to landlords and agencies, who will gladly pay a fee to list their properties.
- HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
  As a former landlord, I can answer the latter: because it's free and it was good enough. If there was a better free website, I'd use that; but it would have to be hugely better than Craigslist for me to open my wallet.
lsc 16y ago
the interesting bit here is that the guy didn't seem to /even consider/ a broker. I wonder why? just too expensive?
CptMauli 16y ago
I'm a bit surprised that there seem to be no good apartment search websites. Has this something to do with the larger home ownership? Or is it an artifact of the larger area of the US? In Germany there is for instance http://www.immobilienscout24.de http://www.immobilienscout24.de and some more websites like it (although the same offers end up on nearly every one of them). The search options there are more finely tuned than on lets say http://www.apartments.com http://www.apartments.com. Also the larger newspapers (for instance http://immobilienmarkt.sueddeutsche.de/ http://immobilienmarkt.sueddeutsche.de/) have often own search engines for places to rent or buy.
nihaar 16y ago
Just thought I'd mention a project I've been working on related to this thread called MapThatPad (http://www.mapthatpad.com http://www.mapthatpad.com) that helps you save apartments you find and stay organized while you hunt. Helped me quite a bit when I was looking with my girlfriend. Having been in the same boat many times, I got tired of spreadsheets and hacked up this site. Would love any feedback or comments.

86 points by faulkner8 16y ago

I sort of watched over his shoulder as he went through this process and it was quite amazing to observe. The guy he ended up working with, for $3 an hour, was quite sharp and motivated. When you think of the 30 hours he saved and the fact that you spend $1000+ on an apartment, the $90 spent is absolutely nothing.

pavel_lishin 16y ago
I'm wondering where the guy he hired lives, and what the economy is like there.
- jey 16y ago
  It appears to be a Persian name.
- faulkner8 16y ago
  The guy he hired was in a middle eastern country.

pixelbath 16y ago

Sorry if this sounds trollish, but Shahan was doing "jobs Americans don't want to do." Not only is this a good idea online, you can also hire domestic (local) concierge services to run errands for you during the day. My mother-in-law successfully runs such a business.

faulkner8 16y ago
In addition to individuals who do this, there are also online services that bids out local concierge services. I know that Chris (the guy who wrote the linked post) has used TaskRabbit (http://taskrabbit.com http://taskrabbit.com). I'm going to try to get him to do a post about that experience as well.
- enjo 16y ago
  Are there any competitors to this? I'd love something like that in Denver.

ig1 16y ago

I'd happily pay for this sort of service, but but don't want to deal with the overhead of having to post on odesk and pick someone suitable (plus the hassle if they're not very good at it). It would be good if there was a more specialist online marketplace for this sort of task which reduce those overheads.

DenisM 16y ago
Well, you want a majordomo - someone who will hire and supervise staff. Alas, the problem is recursive - how do you hire and supervise a majordomo?
saurik 16y ago
Maybe you can outsource that task to odesk. ;P
jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
for apartment hunting or for other types of things.

PStamatiou 16y ago

This is what Noah Kagan <okdork.com> did when looking for his SF apartment.

motters 16y ago

It sounds like a good idea, and something I might try in future apartment searches because in previous jobs it has always taken quite some time to find a desirable place to live. However, there are some niggles at the back of my mind - or perhaps a little Stallman on my shoulder. Translated into UK pounds $3 per hour would certainly be below minimum wage. Is it really a good idea to encourage people to lock themselves into poverty wages? If I can satisfy myself that I'm not actually creating more poverty then perhaps this strategy is worth trying.

faulkner8 16y ago
Actually the guy who Chris ended up using was based in a middle eastern country. The average wage there is $15/day, so $3 per hour is a significant upgrade.
paulgb 16y ago
If someone is willing to work for $3 an hour, it's because they can't find work they'd be willing to do for $4. I'm all for genuine attempts to alleviate poverty, but the poor should be allowed to decide what is in their best interest.

zupatol 16y ago

Unfortunately this is of no help to me. Here in Geneva, Switzerland, the problem is not choosing the apartment, but being chosen among all the other people who want the same apartment you do. I've seen people stand in line just to visit one apartment. I hear there are even worse places than Geneva for finding an apartment. Businesses have sprang up to help people find apartments, so it is possible to outsource your apartment hunt too, but it costs much more than 90$.

nagrom 16y ago
This is absolutely true. I am moving to CERN this weekend and found that securing somewhere to live was extremely stressful, not to mention expensive. I am actually surprised that, given that housing is a basic human need, there is no mass-market apartment-finding company that takes all the horrible awkward work out of finding an apartment and makes it easy and convenient. I've no idea how you'd do it - maybe build entire neighbourhoods based on typical lifestyle choice sets and market those individually. Maybe something like that exists in the US? I've never seen someone successfully do that in Europe.
- enjo 16y ago
  Why is housing so hard to come by anyways? I'm just curious.. it would seem like someone would rise to fill that need if people are literally standing in line to be interviewed for the chance to rent a place.
  - draebek 16y ago
    If I had to guess I'd say the demand is for "housing within N kilometers of point X" and there is nowhere left to build housing in that area, whether because of physical constraints or legal/regulatory constraints (e.g. can't get a permit to demolish that block and put up a dense high rise). (Edit for non-USA-ian units, since we were talking about Geneva.)
  - mattm 16y ago
    In my city, the average family income is about $60k but housing is expensive to buy. One-bedroom condo's start at $200k so a lot of people rent. Unfortunately, since developers can earn so much by selling units instead of renting them, they all veer towards that. I'm sure rent control plays a factor too. Rent can only be increased by 3% per year or something like that. End result, there hasn't been a new building built for rental apartments in my city for over 30 years.

tryke 16y ago

For comedy value, there should be a follow-up article involving the "Casual Encounters" section of Craigslist. 2600 magazine recently had an article about a Bayesian filter for getting the spam out of the "w4m" section. A human could weed out rejections, spambots, and prostitutes, putting the rest into a sortable spreadsheet.

apower 16y ago

Isn't that what wife is for?

apower 16y ago
People here have no sense of humor.
- zackattack 16y ago
  Nah, your comment wasn't funny.

iamdave 16y ago

I'm actually quite interested to see a discourse on the impacts that these sort of ultra low-priced outsourced products have had on concierge and virtual assistant services in small town USA. Sort of along the same vein of how designers formed an ad hoc association of how they felt regarding spec-work and design centric crowdsourcing sites like 99designs. Does anyone have any articles on this?

nitrogen 16y ago

I was very close to trying this for a recent apartment search, but I finally landed a place just before I crossed the threshold. I spent quite a bit more than 30 hours cumulatively, though, so I could have saved a lot of time for more productive tasks.

ciupicri 16y ago

Shouldn't this be the job of a real estate agency? You ask them to find an apartment matching your criteria and they find it (in their database with the current offers).

jey 16y ago

Anyone going to systematize this and create a curated list of vetted apartments for a fee? Maybe something like $9 for a month of access to one geographic area.

ericd 16y ago
I've considered it briefly for PadMapper (http://www.padmapper.com http://www.padmapper.com). It would be very expensive to do for all cities, though - the volumes of listings they would have to look through are pretty enormous if you were doing it generally. One of the big things you get out of this is that you tell the person exactly what you want, and they throw away everything else. There might be some way to make it work, though.
- acgourley 16y ago
  PadMapper really is a good way to find listings on CL, if anyone needs it. Was my go-to for finding places in SF last year.
- potatolicious 16y ago
  I used PadMapper to find my new place a few months ago. Thanks again for all your work on it.
  - ericd 16y ago
    You're welcome, if you have any feedback, I'd love to hear it.
- jey 16y ago
  You wouldn't do it for all geographic areas, just targeted ones that have sufficient demand to make it worthwhile.
- keeptrying 16y ago
  Padmapper rocks! Thank you for all your work on it.
- mistermann 16y ago

nandemo 16y ago

I wanted a place that has an outdoor space (a yard, a porch, a balcony, or a deck), hardwood floors, laundry (in unit, in building, or close by), a very specific location (to balance three commutes), lots of light, and all of the typical apartment requirements (right size, budget, start date, etc). This was clearly the job for a human, Er, no, this is clearly a job for a real-estate-specific website with a search form. The part that only a human can do is to actually visit the apartments but you can't outsource　that, at least not to a remote person. Now, why in the world do people use craigslist by default instead of a better website? It should be beneficial to tenants -- who will save time and money -- and to landlords and agencies, who will gladly pay a fee to list their properties.

HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
As a former landlord, I can answer the latter: because it's free and it was good enough. If there was a better free website, I'd use that; but it would have to be hugely better than Craigslist for me to open my wallet.

lsc 16y ago

the interesting bit here is that the guy didn't seem to /even consider/ a broker. I wonder why? just too expensive?

CptMauli 16y ago

I'm a bit surprised that there seem to be no good apartment search websites. Has this something to do with the larger home ownership? Or is it an artifact of the larger area of the US? In Germany there is for instance http://www.immobilienscout24.de http://www.immobilienscout24.de and some more websites like it (although the same offers end up on nearly every one of them). The search options there are more finely tuned than on lets say http://www.apartments.com http://www.apartments.com. Also the larger newspapers (for instance http://immobilienmarkt.sueddeutsche.de/ http://immobilienmarkt.sueddeutsche.de/) have often own search engines for places to rent or buy.

nihaar 16y ago

Just thought I'd mention a project I've been working on related to this thread called MapThatPad (http://www.mapthatpad.com http://www.mapthatpad.com) that helps you save apartments you find and stay organized while you hunt. Helped me quite a bit when I was looking with my girlfriend. Having been in the same boat many times, I got tired of spreadsheets and hacked up this site. Would love any feedback or comments.