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I know the line of business you’re talking about - getting landlords to list their properties. It is a gnarly problem, but one that’s solvable. The catch is tha
by alfredallan1 8y ago
I know the line of business you’re talking about - getting landlords to list their properties. It is a gnarly problem, but one that’s solvable. The catch is that it is truly hyper local.
You can’t do Thai from Chile. It needs to be done by being physically present in different major Thai destinations that you want to list, going from door to door to meet the landlords you already know about, and to discover other you don’t know about. It is literally a pariah dog’s job while you’re getting started (and you’ll graduate into a working dog’s job if you’re successful), but once you have established basic rapport and have the contact numbers (not just emails) of the landlords, you could very well just call from from a nice Thai beach, as long as you maintain periodic physical contact. It is great that the app is polished, but additionally (if you already havent) you’ll have to make the technical side such that it is extremely easy to update - and the owners can do it themselves. Convice the owners to do it themselves. Make a few local friends who speak English, and are young and hungry, make them commissioned agents. Take them along with you, assign each renter to an agent, and be fair (and initially generous) with the agents. But be sure you the “keys” are with only you.
If you do it right, and are able to be accepted into the culture (important to behave as they do, be very humble, and give up the traditional “confidence”/arrogance commonly espoused in western society), and be sociable enough to blend in with the landlords, you might become a social phenomenon, and get many more landlords through word of mouth. I strongly recommend you give a serious go, physically, hyper-locally, town-to-town, house-to-house. Not just make the app and expect that the supply side will come looking (the demand side will, you’ve already figured that out). You have to go to them, convince them, request them, implore to them, show them the money, and the potential market (don’t expect them to understand the benefits straight off the bat). You’ll also get into trouble when a renter trashes a place. When you do, either sell to AirBnB or hire experienced people from that company. When you pull it off, you’ll be like a mini/local airbnb, and worth a decent fraction of what they’re worth.
Understand that this is a supply-demand business. Your demand will be off the internet. Market it the way you know. The supply part is very different. Do Thai landlords frequent Reddit in droves?