11 ms·

Apartment baiting with Facebook Ads

186 points by hackathonguy 8y ago

ericst 8y ago
Well, that is a rather clever use of Facebook Ads. I knew a guy who tried to use them as a dating service, I guess the lack of incentive is what made his trial fail...
- BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
  > I guess the lack of incentive is what made his trial fail... He should have offered a cash bribe. That would surely have worked.
  - wahnfrieden 8y ago
    HN wonders about whether our industry truly is unwelcoming to women, meanwhile people openly joke about soliciting prostitution. “Riff culture” and “it’s just a joke” don’t make it acceptable.
    - eberkund 8y ago
      Lighten up. The obviously bad idea of offering potential dates a cash reward is what makes this joke funny because in the context of running a Facebook ad campaign discounts and promotions are quite common.
    - mantas 8y ago
      Prostitution works both ways in 21st century. Given how women sex tourism is rising, I wonder wether men or women have less against prostitution these days...
    - xfitm3 8y ago
      What assumptions are you making about the industry I work in? edit: And the gender of the person adversiting..
    - tilertex 8y ago
      You must be a total hoot at parties
  - overcast 8y ago
    You mean like free food and drinks? Basically a cash bribe to get her on a date with you.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - ufmace 8y ago
    That depends on your definition of "worked".
- FRex 8y ago
  There was a case on YouTube where a (sort of) satirical YouTuber Reactor (a fake over the top reaction channel) used a cut up footage of GradeAUnderA hating reaction channels as an ad on GradeAUnderA's own videos to direct people to Reactor channel as part of a scheme to bait GradeAUnderA (a 2-3 million subscribed channel) into attacking his small channel (1-2 thousand subs post these antics, much more later after the scheme came to light) to "expose" him for being a bully, starting fights (despite saying how he hates them and how they ruin YouTube and attacking people who are having them) and so on. What a quagmire, I know. Good video summarizing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9_6UCkxu_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9_6UCkxu_U
- jcl 8y ago
  One guy used them to prank his roommate: http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/ http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-... (I was kind of disappointed that the "hypertargeted ad" link in the article went to a generic how-to article instead of that post.)
  - squeaky-clean 8y ago
    I didn't even click the link in the article because I was sure it would be this!
  - hackathonguy 8y ago
    Amazing post! Will add to the article.
afarrell 8y ago
Neat. I have an friend-of-a-friend who is trying to find a dog-friendly flat in southish London and I've been trying to find a way that they could do this.
dbatten 8y ago
Somebody should build a service for this. My wife and I recently moved and, while we ended up somewhere we like, there was one particular street right next to our old house that we always wished we would be able to get a home on. When we talked to other neighbors that were thinking about moving, we found out that we were far from the only ones eyeing that street. Unfortunately, people there rarely sold and, when they did, the homes got snapped up quick. We thought about sending letters to see if somebody wanted to sell to us without going the realtor route, but we never did. Facebook ads would have made it way easier. And a service where we forked over $50 to run some ads plus $250 as a reward and pushed a button would have been better still.
- matwood 8y ago
  > We thought about sending letters to see if somebody wanted to sell to us without going the realtor route I've gotten letters like that before and always assumed they were Realtors trolling for clients.
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    In a similar situation, here, except I've gotten phone calls asking if I was interested in selling my house. I don't own a house.
  - chasedehan 8y ago
    The people I know who have actually done it wrote a personalized response as to why they wanted to live in that particular area. i.e. "my son lives on X street and I would like to live by him" or "the access to hiking/biking trails is one of the things I cherish the most." , etc. Otherwise, you are right that I think most of those letters are from Realtors and go immediately in the trash.
    - matwood 8y ago
      I get ~4 calls/day from realtors wanting to list my house. It was so bad last summer that my wife changed her voice mail to start with "If you are Realtor, never call me again...". At this point I would be suspicious of even a personal letter like you mention above. I really hope technology continues to squeeze realtors out of business. At one point I was indifferent to them, but they have turned my opinion negative.
abathur 8y ago
This made me curious about whether there are good lifehacker-style articles/listicles/compendia of creative personal uses of targeted advertising platforms. Not sure if the answer is no, or if it's just one of those ungoogleable ideas.
- hackathonguy 8y ago
  OP here. Totally! There are a few good examples in this thread. Let’s create a list!
lukethomas 8y ago
I did a similar process when house-shopping. Setup ads for a particular location, specifically targeting people who owned in the area, but who lived out of state. 1. Personal FB ad copy 2. Landing page w/ more information about what we were looking for. 3. Contact form I received ~5 leads from people willing to sell their house with about $100 in ad spend.
- iagovar 8y ago
  How do you target owners in FB (A bit time since I don't use it, but don't remember any particular filter allowing this)
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    Not only is there a "homeowners" category in the "Demographics" targeting section, but there are specific sub-categories like "Home value" $50,000-$99,999", "Home type: Condo", etc. IIRC, they get it from a data broker like Experian.
    - astura 8y ago
      And the data broker, in turn, compiles that information from public records. LexisNexis is actually the big one who resells that information, you can request a copy of your report from their site for free to see what they got on you. Mine listed my house, I believe the day I bought it, and the source of that information (in my case my town hall).
      - lukethomas 8y ago
        Yup - I do believe that FB is severing their relationship with these data brokers shortly, so unsure if this will continue to be available.
        astura 8y ago
        Without the data brokers they may try to instead compile that information themselves straight from the source like Zillow does.
samsolomon 8y ago
There really is a ton of stuff you can do with Facebook ads. I got one of my first jobs out of college by running ads targeted to the types of companies I wanted to work for. https://solomon.io/how-to-get-a-job-interview-tomorrow-using-facebook-ads/ https://solomon.io/how-to-get-a-job-interview-tomorrow-using...
- hackathonguy 8y ago
  Very cool! Thanks for sharing!
astura 8y ago
I've used Craigslist this way, most of the public rental ads for our area were either for shitty places or overpriced. There's nice to very nice apartment complexes in our area but they are very expensive, have on-schedule yearly rent increase, and charge pet fees. So I posted an ad on Craigslist in "housing wanted" saying our approximate credit score (750+ each), employment history, what we were looking for, and our income plus a little intro about us personally to give it a little flair. Since we were pretty much ideal renters I was hoping landlords of the nicer properties would look there first to avoid the sketchy unqualified riff raff that may reply to public ads and waste their time. The other thing is we have/had cats, so the pool of apartments was smaller for us so it made sense to "target" landlords who were open to pets. To my surprise, got a bunch of really great hits! Way better places at better prices than the public ads. Apparently landlords actually DO browse Craigslist for qualified candidates. Some even congratulated us on being responsible and "ahead of the curve." Ended up renting from someone found that way. Total cost was $0. I imagine Facebook groups would work just as well or better. Facebook groups weren't really a thing last time I was apartment hunting and I've owned for a while now so I won't ever get to personally try it out. Facebook groups work way better than Craigslist for both buying and selling stuff and, in general, a local Facebook group I belong to has been insanely useful for a lot of different things.
- vidoc 8y ago
  > I was hoping landlords of the nicer properties would look there first to avoid the sketchy unqualified riff raff that may reply to their ads and waste their time How did you manage to convey that? By virtue of posting an ad or you went ahead and specified in the ad how high educated, high income, and overall awesome you are?
  - starpilot 8y ago
    "I'm working for X having graduated from Y, and have no pets. Normal guy etc." I've done it before and it works. Really stands out among all the "Single parent, 3 dogs and 2 cats, can afford $500/month for a 1-bedroom apartment in city downtown" ads.
  - astura 8y ago
nsx147 8y ago
It's important to note here that this will only work in densely populated areas. Otherwise FB will make you expand your radius / criteria to fit a large enough population potentially rendering the ad useless.
- IshKebab 8y ago
  In less densely populated areas there are less flats / houses to choose from so you have to expand your search in proportion anyway.
_RPM 8y ago
Why ground floor?
- zebraflask 8y ago
  People with mobility issues sometimes prefer not having to use stairs or elevators. Not implying that's the author's preference, but that's what I've seen in the RE arena.
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    It's also much easier to access when you have a young child with a stroller.
    - alistairSH 8y ago
      Or a pet that needs easy access to the outdoors. My son lives on the middle floor of a mid-rise apartment block and it's a bit annoying to take the dog out to pee.
- hackathonguy 8y ago
  OP here. We have twins, and many apartment buildings in Jerusalem lack elevators. Also, I’ve found quality of life to be markedly improved once we’ve moved to a garden apartment! :-)
  - Markoff 8y ago
    that still doesn't explain why not go for 2nd or 3rd floor which is still very easy to handle even with small children (park pram somewhere in basement or ground floor), I am living on 5th floor without elevator with 2nd baby, so did I in previous apartment with previous child, now that's extreme, but 2nd (just bove ground floor) or 3rd floor would be just fine higher floor you go less foot traffic (noise) around your door you have, less likely your apartment to get robbed, less street noise, less insects, less air pollution and I could go on and on, basically higher you go the better, benefits end on the top floor where possibility of thieves returns, also hot in summer and possibility of leaking roof, but at least no top neighbors noise
baking 8y ago
Do people even look at Facebook ads? On my browser they rotate through every ten seconds, so even if I was interested the chance that I could read them and decide to click on them before they go away is nil. In he past, every single Facebook ad I'd ever clicked on turned out to be click-bait (the photo/ad had nothing to do with the link.) The ads are on a currently on a part of the screen I have mentally blocked out. The idea that you can hit 100% of the Facebook users in a neighborhood is laughable.
- balls187 8y ago
  Yes. How else does Facebook make it's revenue?
  - baking 8y ago
    I'm not questioning that Facebook sells ads, I am questioning their effectiveness and whether the OP is overselling it. Edit: For example, the only Facebook ads I've seen recently are for riding lawnmowers. I live in the city.
    - lostlogin 8y ago
      Was about to say that I think you mean ‘ride on’. After a search it turns out some places call them ‘riding’ mowers. It sounds hilarious but there you go.
    - balls187 8y ago
      > I'm not questioning that Facebook sells ads, I am questioning their effectiveness and whether the OP is overselling it. If Facebook ads weren't effective; would advertisers continue to buy them? My direct experience using facebook ads is that they are exceptionally effective at targeting people. > For example, the only Facebook ads I've seen recently are for riding lawnmowers. I live in the city. That's not enough information to make a judgement on the efficacy of facebook's ad platform. Perhaps you're correct, and you were miss targeted by Facebook's algorithms. Or perhaps the advertiser didn't properly target their ad. Or perhaps the advertiser WANTED to target people living in cities, hoping to get in front of the eyes of any potential future customers who are thinking of moving out to the country. If nothing else, you at least remember you saw an ad for a Riding Lawnmower.
J_Sherz 8y ago
Someone in my coworking space is building a platform that does this in New York and Boston. It incentivizes departing tenants to be involved in the leasing process by cutting out the real estate agent and giving a portion of that fee back to the departing tenant. They've just launched: https://www.cribdilla.com/ https://www.cribdilla.com/
supergirl 8y ago
"I payed for an ad" WOW so clever
phyzome 8y ago
"Pardon the interruption. We’ve seen you here before. Let’s make things official." Fuck you, Medium. I want to read a blog post, not sign a contract or marry you.
- kentt 8y ago
  This may reduce the annoyance: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/make-medium-readable-agai/kljjfejkagofbgklifblndjelgabcmig?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/make-medium-readab...
  - phyzome 8y ago
    Installing a browser extension so I can read someone's blog post sounds like overkill. :-)
    - astura 8y ago
      How about this? https://outline.com/duT3Ye https://outline.com/duT3Ye
- Qub3d 8y ago
  In chrome, go to Settings > Advanced > Content Settings, Select "Cookies", then add medium.com to the Clear on exit category.[0] Works like a charm! [0]: Example - https://i.imgur.com/YfUKdjT.png https://i.imgur.com/YfUKdjT.png
- nottorp 8y ago
  Hmm nice argument for GDPR. They are tracking my visits without my permission or even notifying me...
aj7 8y ago
“Another way would be to split the prize: $125 for the person who’s apartment we’ll be taking over, and $125 for whoever refers us to that person.” It ain’t broke don’t fix it.
methodover 8y ago
> Couple looking for 2-bedroom in neighbourhood. Budget: $1250. God I need to move out of the bay area. I pay $1000 more than that for my one bedroom in Oakland. And it's not even in a great area... And it's not even that nice of an apartment! Great idea what this guy did. Maybe I should give it a shot.
- hackathonguy 8y ago
  That’s amazing. Jerusalem is considered the most expensive real estate market in Israel (apart from Tel Aviv), and $1250 is definitely on the high side for a two bedroom.
fcbrooklyn 8y ago
I'm not sure if it would matter, if you were just doing this as an individual once or twice, but it's worth noting that in New York State, at least, this would be an illegal transaction, unless the tenant referring you to their landlord happened to be a licensed real estate agent. The definition of brokering a transaction according to state law, for which you must be licensed is that you're facilitating the transaction "for another" and "for a fee". The $250 dollar reward, therefore makes this an illegal act on the part of the existing tenant. Laws might well be different in other states obviously.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 8y ago
  Who would complain, though, particularly in this scenario?
  - fcbrooklyn 8y ago
    Typically (but not always) the complaints about this kind of thing come from people who believe they've been discriminated against, but in fact pretty much anyone can complain. In NYS, you can call the DOS and register a complaint for pretty much any reason you like, and they are pretty consistent about investigating all of them.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  My landlord (in NY) offers a sizeable reward for referring new tenants. It's posted everywhere in the building. Are you claiming this is illegal?
  - fcbrooklyn 8y ago
    Probably, yes, although as I said it would probably never be enforced. To be clear, your landlord is not the one breaking the law. Anyone taking them up on the offer would be though. IANAL, but I was a licensed real estate agent in NYS about 15 years ago, and this was covered in the course materials.
  - fcbrooklyn 8y ago

186 points by hackathonguy 8y ago

Well, that is a rather clever use of Facebook Ads. I knew a guy who tried to use them as a dating service, I guess the lack of incentive is what made his trial fail...

BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
> I guess the lack of incentive is what made his trial fail... He should have offered a cash bribe. That would surely have worked.
- wahnfrieden 8y ago
  HN wonders about whether our industry truly is unwelcoming to women, meanwhile people openly joke about soliciting prostitution. “Riff culture” and “it’s just a joke” don’t make it acceptable.
  - eberkund 8y ago
    Lighten up. The obviously bad idea of offering potential dates a cash reward is what makes this joke funny because in the context of running a Facebook ad campaign discounts and promotions are quite common.
  - mantas 8y ago
    Prostitution works both ways in 21st century. Given how women sex tourism is rising, I wonder wether men or women have less against prostitution these days...
  - xfitm3 8y ago
    What assumptions are you making about the industry I work in? edit: And the gender of the person adversiting..
  - tilertex 8y ago
    You must be a total hoot at parties
- overcast 8y ago
  You mean like free food and drinks? Basically a cash bribe to get her on a date with you.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- ufmace 8y ago
  That depends on your definition of "worked".
FRex 8y ago
There was a case on YouTube where a (sort of) satirical YouTuber Reactor (a fake over the top reaction channel) used a cut up footage of GradeAUnderA hating reaction channels as an ad on GradeAUnderA's own videos to direct people to Reactor channel as part of a scheme to bait GradeAUnderA (a 2-3 million subscribed channel) into attacking his small channel (1-2 thousand subs post these antics, much more later after the scheme came to light) to "expose" him for being a bully, starting fights (despite saying how he hates them and how they ruin YouTube and attacking people who are having them) and so on. What a quagmire, I know. Good video summarizing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9_6UCkxu_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9_6UCkxu_U
jcl 8y ago
One guy used them to prank his roommate: http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/ http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-... (I was kind of disappointed that the "hypertargeted ad" link in the article went to a generic how-to article instead of that post.)
- squeaky-clean 8y ago
  I didn't even click the link in the article because I was sure it would be this!
- hackathonguy 8y ago
  Amazing post! Will add to the article.

afarrell 8y ago

Neat. I have an friend-of-a-friend who is trying to find a dog-friendly flat in southish London and I've been trying to find a way that they could do this.

dbatten 8y ago

Somebody should build a service for this. My wife and I recently moved and, while we ended up somewhere we like, there was one particular street right next to our old house that we always wished we would be able to get a home on. When we talked to other neighbors that were thinking about moving, we found out that we were far from the only ones eyeing that street. Unfortunately, people there rarely sold and, when they did, the homes got snapped up quick. We thought about sending letters to see if somebody wanted to sell to us without going the realtor route, but we never did. Facebook ads would have made it way easier. And a service where we forked over $50 to run some ads plus $250 as a reward and pushed a button would have been better still.

matwood 8y ago
> We thought about sending letters to see if somebody wanted to sell to us without going the realtor route I've gotten letters like that before and always assumed they were Realtors trolling for clients.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  In a similar situation, here, except I've gotten phone calls asking if I was interested in selling my house. I don't own a house.
- chasedehan 8y ago
  The people I know who have actually done it wrote a personalized response as to why they wanted to live in that particular area. i.e. "my son lives on X street and I would like to live by him" or "the access to hiking/biking trails is one of the things I cherish the most." , etc. Otherwise, you are right that I think most of those letters are from Realtors and go immediately in the trash.
  - matwood 8y ago
    I get ~4 calls/day from realtors wanting to list my house. It was so bad last summer that my wife changed her voice mail to start with "If you are Realtor, never call me again...". At this point I would be suspicious of even a personal letter like you mention above. I really hope technology continues to squeeze realtors out of business. At one point I was indifferent to them, but they have turned my opinion negative.

abathur 8y ago

This made me curious about whether there are good lifehacker-style articles/listicles/compendia of creative personal uses of targeted advertising platforms. Not sure if the answer is no, or if it's just one of those ungoogleable ideas.

hackathonguy 8y ago
OP here. Totally! There are a few good examples in this thread. Let’s create a list!

lukethomas 8y ago

I did a similar process when house-shopping. Setup ads for a particular location, specifically targeting people who owned in the area, but who lived out of state. 1. Personal FB ad copy 2. Landing page w/ more information about what we were looking for. 3. Contact form I received ~5 leads from people willing to sell their house with about $100 in ad spend.

iagovar 8y ago
How do you target owners in FB (A bit time since I don't use it, but don't remember any particular filter allowing this)
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  Not only is there a "homeowners" category in the "Demographics" targeting section, but there are specific sub-categories like "Home value" $50,000-$99,999", "Home type: Condo", etc. IIRC, they get it from a data broker like Experian.
  - astura 8y ago
    And the data broker, in turn, compiles that information from public records. LexisNexis is actually the big one who resells that information, you can request a copy of your report from their site for free to see what they got on you. Mine listed my house, I believe the day I bought it, and the source of that information (in my case my town hall).
    - lukethomas 8y ago
      Yup - I do believe that FB is severing their relationship with these data brokers shortly, so unsure if this will continue to be available.
      - astura 8y ago
        Without the data brokers they may try to instead compile that information themselves straight from the source like Zillow does.

samsolomon 8y ago

There really is a ton of stuff you can do with Facebook ads. I got one of my first jobs out of college by running ads targeted to the types of companies I wanted to work for. https://solomon.io/how-to-get-a-job-interview-tomorrow-using-facebook-ads/ https://solomon.io/how-to-get-a-job-interview-tomorrow-using...

hackathonguy 8y ago
Very cool! Thanks for sharing!

astura 8y ago

I've used Craigslist this way, most of the public rental ads for our area were either for shitty places or overpriced. There's nice to very nice apartment complexes in our area but they are very expensive, have on-schedule yearly rent increase, and charge pet fees. So I posted an ad on Craigslist in "housing wanted" saying our approximate credit score (750+ each), employment history, what we were looking for, and our income plus a little intro about us personally to give it a little flair. Since we were pretty much ideal renters I was hoping landlords of the nicer properties would look there first to avoid the sketchy unqualified riff raff that may reply to public ads and waste their time. The other thing is we have/had cats, so the pool of apartments was smaller for us so it made sense to "target" landlords who were open to pets. To my surprise, got a bunch of really great hits! Way better places at better prices than the public ads. Apparently landlords actually DO browse Craigslist for qualified candidates. Some even congratulated us on being responsible and "ahead of the curve." Ended up renting from someone found that way. Total cost was $0. I imagine Facebook groups would work just as well or better. Facebook groups weren't really a thing last time I was apartment hunting and I've owned for a while now so I won't ever get to personally try it out. Facebook groups work way better than Craigslist for both buying and selling stuff and, in general, a local Facebook group I belong to has been insanely useful for a lot of different things.

vidoc 8y ago
> I was hoping landlords of the nicer properties would look there first to avoid the sketchy unqualified riff raff that may reply to their ads and waste their time How did you manage to convey that? By virtue of posting an ad or you went ahead and specified in the ad how high educated, high income, and overall awesome you are?
- starpilot 8y ago
  "I'm working for X having graduated from Y, and have no pets. Normal guy etc." I've done it before and it works. Really stands out among all the "Single parent, 3 dogs and 2 cats, can afford $500/month for a 1-bedroom apartment in city downtown" ads.
- astura 8y ago

nsx147 8y ago

It's important to note here that this will only work in densely populated areas. Otherwise FB will make you expand your radius / criteria to fit a large enough population potentially rendering the ad useless.

IshKebab 8y ago
In less densely populated areas there are less flats / houses to choose from so you have to expand your search in proportion anyway.

_RPM 8y ago

Why ground floor?

zebraflask 8y ago
People with mobility issues sometimes prefer not having to use stairs or elevators. Not implying that's the author's preference, but that's what I've seen in the RE arena.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  It's also much easier to access when you have a young child with a stroller.
  - alistairSH 8y ago
    Or a pet that needs easy access to the outdoors. My son lives on the middle floor of a mid-rise apartment block and it's a bit annoying to take the dog out to pee.
hackathonguy 8y ago
OP here. We have twins, and many apartment buildings in Jerusalem lack elevators. Also, I’ve found quality of life to be markedly improved once we’ve moved to a garden apartment! :-)
- Markoff 8y ago
  that still doesn't explain why not go for 2nd or 3rd floor which is still very easy to handle even with small children (park pram somewhere in basement or ground floor), I am living on 5th floor without elevator with 2nd baby, so did I in previous apartment with previous child, now that's extreme, but 2nd (just bove ground floor) or 3rd floor would be just fine higher floor you go less foot traffic (noise) around your door you have, less likely your apartment to get robbed, less street noise, less insects, less air pollution and I could go on and on, basically higher you go the better, benefits end on the top floor where possibility of thieves returns, also hot in summer and possibility of leaking roof, but at least no top neighbors noise

baking 8y ago

Do people even look at Facebook ads? On my browser they rotate through every ten seconds, so even if I was interested the chance that I could read them and decide to click on them before they go away is nil. In he past, every single Facebook ad I'd ever clicked on turned out to be click-bait (the photo/ad had nothing to do with the link.) The ads are on a currently on a part of the screen I have mentally blocked out. The idea that you can hit 100% of the Facebook users in a neighborhood is laughable.

balls187 8y ago
Yes. How else does Facebook make it's revenue?
- baking 8y ago
  I'm not questioning that Facebook sells ads, I am questioning their effectiveness and whether the OP is overselling it. Edit: For example, the only Facebook ads I've seen recently are for riding lawnmowers. I live in the city.
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    Was about to say that I think you mean ‘ride on’. After a search it turns out some places call them ‘riding’ mowers. It sounds hilarious but there you go.
  - balls187 8y ago
    > I'm not questioning that Facebook sells ads, I am questioning their effectiveness and whether the OP is overselling it. If Facebook ads weren't effective; would advertisers continue to buy them? My direct experience using facebook ads is that they are exceptionally effective at targeting people. > For example, the only Facebook ads I've seen recently are for riding lawnmowers. I live in the city. That's not enough information to make a judgement on the efficacy of facebook's ad platform. Perhaps you're correct, and you were miss targeted by Facebook's algorithms. Or perhaps the advertiser didn't properly target their ad. Or perhaps the advertiser WANTED to target people living in cities, hoping to get in front of the eyes of any potential future customers who are thinking of moving out to the country. If nothing else, you at least remember you saw an ad for a Riding Lawnmower.

J_Sherz 8y ago

Someone in my coworking space is building a platform that does this in New York and Boston. It incentivizes departing tenants to be involved in the leasing process by cutting out the real estate agent and giving a portion of that fee back to the departing tenant. They've just launched: https://www.cribdilla.com/ https://www.cribdilla.com/

supergirl 8y ago

"I payed for an ad" WOW so clever

phyzome 8y ago

"Pardon the interruption. We’ve seen you here before. Let’s make things official." Fuck you, Medium. I want to read a blog post, not sign a contract or marry you.

kentt 8y ago
This may reduce the annoyance: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/make-medium-readable-agai/kljjfejkagofbgklifblndjelgabcmig?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/make-medium-readab...
- phyzome 8y ago
  Installing a browser extension so I can read someone's blog post sounds like overkill. :-)
  - astura 8y ago
    How about this? https://outline.com/duT3Ye https://outline.com/duT3Ye
Qub3d 8y ago
In chrome, go to Settings > Advanced > Content Settings, Select "Cookies", then add medium.com to the Clear on exit category.[0] Works like a charm! [0]: Example - https://i.imgur.com/YfUKdjT.png https://i.imgur.com/YfUKdjT.png
nottorp 8y ago
Hmm nice argument for GDPR. They are tracking my visits without my permission or even notifying me...

aj7 8y ago

“Another way would be to split the prize: $125 for the person who’s apartment we’ll be taking over, and $125 for whoever refers us to that person.” It ain’t broke don’t fix it.

methodover 8y ago

> Couple looking for 2-bedroom in neighbourhood. Budget: $1250. God I need to move out of the bay area. I pay $1000 more than that for my one bedroom in Oakland. And it's not even in a great area... And it's not even that nice of an apartment! Great idea what this guy did. Maybe I should give it a shot.

hackathonguy 8y ago
That’s amazing. Jerusalem is considered the most expensive real estate market in Israel (apart from Tel Aviv), and $1250 is definitely on the high side for a two bedroom.

fcbrooklyn 8y ago

I'm not sure if it would matter, if you were just doing this as an individual once or twice, but it's worth noting that in New York State, at least, this would be an illegal transaction, unless the tenant referring you to their landlord happened to be a licensed real estate agent. The definition of brokering a transaction according to state law, for which you must be licensed is that you're facilitating the transaction "for another" and "for a fee". The $250 dollar reward, therefore makes this an illegal act on the part of the existing tenant. Laws might well be different in other states obviously.

tgsovlerkhgsel 8y ago
Who would complain, though, particularly in this scenario?
- fcbrooklyn 8y ago
  Typically (but not always) the complaints about this kind of thing come from people who believe they've been discriminated against, but in fact pretty much anyone can complain. In NYS, you can call the DOS and register a complaint for pretty much any reason you like, and they are pretty consistent about investigating all of them.
perl4ever 8y ago
My landlord (in NY) offers a sizeable reward for referring new tenants. It's posted everywhere in the building. Are you claiming this is illegal?
- fcbrooklyn 8y ago
  Probably, yes, although as I said it would probably never be enforced. To be clear, your landlord is not the one breaking the law. Anyone taking them up on the offer would be though. IANAL, but I was a licensed real estate agent in NYS about 15 years ago, and this was covered in the course materials.
- fcbrooklyn 8y ago