5 ms·

As someone who just jumped through all the hoops to find a new apartment, the pain is real. I think the main issue is that the incentives are misaligned from th

As someone who just jumped through all the hoops to find a new apartment, the pain is real. I think the main issue is that the incentives are misaligned from the perspective of the seeker. Where I'm currently at (the Netherlands), the market is dominated by agents. Using an agent makes sense from the perspective of the apartment owner — they will take care of managing the ads, initial screening, arranging viewings etc. Given how many people contact a single viewing, you definitely don't want them hitting your personal inbox or phone. From the agent's perspective, it's good to drive people to their company's website rather than one of the big aggregate ones. Having more people visit it means they're more likely to do business with that company specifically. Getting people to visit your company's site is pretty straightforward: they put up ads there earlier, often so much earlier that by the time you see an ad on an aggregate site, it's already fully booked for viewings. And that's how we end up with dozens of different company sites, each crappy in their own way, and in the middle of it all, people trying to find a home pulling their hair out, refreshing a bunch of different websites every few hours.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
amelius 5y ago
The question, though, is: why doesn't this converge to a single monopolist agency, like in the rest of capitalism?
- scythe 5y ago
  Guess who spends the most money on lobbying? https://www.statista.com/statistics/257344/top-lobbying-spenders-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/257344/top-lobbying-spen...
  - wintermutestwin 5y ago
    Love the dark pattern on that site's cookie popup. How annoying!
- colinhb 5y ago
  In my experience in NL makelaars (brokers) serve particular niches, and I expect they can outcompete larger firms that don’t understand the neighborhood or municipal market as well, the market segment (roughly price), the kind of buyer/renter, the kind of seller/leaser, not to mention just their access to “deal flow” in their networks unrelated to their expertise. Think it’s all related apartments and houses not really being fungible. ESIT: Also, more directly to GP’s experience, when I was in the market in NL I found the biggest aggregator to be very useful, which is apparently different from their experience: funda.nl
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Because it's a mostly unregulated market. A new competitor has minimal government regulations to satisfy in order to start and everyone and their dog can start doing this job (and believe me, I've met some interesting agents when looking for the best deals both looking for rent and renting out my property). The big centralised agencies don't really have a way to stop smaller agents offering cheaper services and serving different markets (even if they're just different neighbourhoods) is hard. This is how capitalism works when there is no government helping monopolies to form in the name of security / justice / anti-money laundering / insert-politician-buzzword-of-the-day.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    This does not explain anything. The natural end condition of an unregulated market is a monopoly. That is why we need regulation. So, something is operating to provide implicit regulation. In this case it seems like chaos serves that role. Monopoly relies on a self-ordering property common to most market conditions.
    - TheGigaChad 5y ago
    - e3bc54b2 5y ago
      The explanation GP provided is extremely low cost of entry. An agent doesn't even need an office. Here is my country many agents go free wheeling with a phone number and a bike. All they need is some connections with homeowners and they're off to business.
- bubblethink 5y ago
  Because the duration is too long (a year) and the cost is significant for all parties to let a middleman take a huge cut of this pie. For shorter duration stays, we already have the consolidation around airbnb.
tromp 5y ago
Housing website https://funda.nl https://funda.nl is pretty dominant in the Netherlands. Why would you need to search many agent's websites when nearly all inventory shows up on funda.nl ? I find it much preferable to North American sites like https://realtor.ca https://realtor.ca that think that number of baths is more important than floorspace (which to my utter amazement is often not even available).
- brightball 5y ago
  That has always shocked me as well. Even houses can be difficult in many cases.
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  +1 to https://funda.nl https://funda.nl. In fact as a new immigrant I bought house completely through funda. They have nice tie-ups with all the regulatory/certificate providers such as construction report etc., Fantastic experience overall. Selling though is a completely different story it's almost impossible without an agent. And they do provide a valuable service; like photo session, publishing on funda and others, taking care of house-viewing etc.,
- Etheryte 5y ago
  You're right in that most listings eventually end up on sites such as Funda, Pararius etc. However, almost all offers go online on an agent website first, oftentimes considerably so. Your milage will vary of course, personally I started using agent sites after calling an ad that had been up on Pararius for 5 minutes yielded the response that the viewing list is already full. Turned out it had already been up on the agent page for a day and well-priced offers go fast in desirable areas. It is worth noting that I live in a very contested area, I would hope life is better in smaller places.
  - sam_lowry_ 5y ago
    Same in Belgium. Agencies first email new offers to their registered users, then publish on agency websites, and only afterwards publish on immoweb.be. There are sometimes rare jewels published directly by individuals on immoweb.be but the bulk of the offers is trash.
monkeybutton 5y ago
>Given how many people contact a single viewing, you definitely don't want them hitting your personal inbox or phone. This is something I noticed last time I was apartment hunting in Montréal. You'd see a sign or listing, call, and the number would be out of service. As if landlords were using virtual numbers/call forwarding services and just shutting it off once the unit was rented.
- dvtrn 5y ago
  I might test this one day just to verify it did start with zillow, but after an interesting set of experiences* calling phone numbers for rentals on Zillow I started getting some very odd text messages about bank accounts I don't own and suspicious activity. I don't call phone numbers on listing sites anymore, even if there's a face and an agency next to it. Better off looking up the agency, going to their website an calling that number (which in all three cases of the above, were different than the one on Zillow). --- * by "interesting set of experiences" I mean calling the number on a listing took me to an automated menu and a robotic voice where I had to enter the street number, and then first five letters of a street name so it could "look up" the property I was inquiring about, and connect me to the right seller. Hanging up on that nonsense immediately and calling the leasing agency's number via their website got me a human being in two rings, and the leasing agent for the unit I was interested in after about 45 seconds of hold music.
vishnugupta 5y ago
> From the agent's perspective, it's good to drive people to their company's website rather than one of the big aggregate ones This is strange, wasn't my experience at all. Just about every house I viewed through funda was advertised by agents. And when I put up my house for sale the first thing the agent did was to publish on funda. All the agents care about is selling a house they get a hefty sum (0.3% if I remember correctly) and are totally fine advertising on funda. As a house seeker I dealt with a bunch of agents and the experience wasn't all that bad to be honest. Mind you all this was in early 2019; from what I hear late 2020 onwards the market has gone bananas in the Netherlands and Amsterdam in particular.
- unilynx 5y ago
  Having just (almost) sold a house in NL, the agent explained that the ordering currently was: - paid searches (even at other agents) - unpaid searches at their own agency - social media - agency website - funda each step would be on the next day, so if you're only watching funda, you're already four days behind

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

amelius 5y ago

The question, though, is: why doesn't this converge to a single monopolist agency, like in the rest of capitalism?

scythe 5y ago
Guess who spends the most money on lobbying? https://www.statista.com/statistics/257344/top-lobbying-spenders-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/257344/top-lobbying-spen...
- wintermutestwin 5y ago
  Love the dark pattern on that site's cookie popup. How annoying!
colinhb 5y ago
In my experience in NL makelaars (brokers) serve particular niches, and I expect they can outcompete larger firms that don’t understand the neighborhood or municipal market as well, the market segment (roughly price), the kind of buyer/renter, the kind of seller/leaser, not to mention just their access to “deal flow” in their networks unrelated to their expertise. Think it’s all related apartments and houses not really being fungible. ESIT: Also, more directly to GP’s experience, when I was in the market in NL I found the biggest aggregator to be very useful, which is apparently different from their experience: funda.nl
jokethrowaway 5y ago
Because it's a mostly unregulated market. A new competitor has minimal government regulations to satisfy in order to start and everyone and their dog can start doing this job (and believe me, I've met some interesting agents when looking for the best deals both looking for rent and renting out my property). The big centralised agencies don't really have a way to stop smaller agents offering cheaper services and serving different markets (even if they're just different neighbourhoods) is hard. This is how capitalism works when there is no government helping monopolies to form in the name of security / justice / anti-money laundering / insert-politician-buzzword-of-the-day.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  This does not explain anything. The natural end condition of an unregulated market is a monopoly. That is why we need regulation. So, something is operating to provide implicit regulation. In this case it seems like chaos serves that role. Monopoly relies on a self-ordering property common to most market conditions.
  - TheGigaChad 5y ago
  - e3bc54b2 5y ago
    The explanation GP provided is extremely low cost of entry. An agent doesn't even need an office. Here is my country many agents go free wheeling with a phone number and a bike. All they need is some connections with homeowners and they're off to business.
bubblethink 5y ago
Because the duration is too long (a year) and the cost is significant for all parties to let a middleman take a huge cut of this pie. For shorter duration stays, we already have the consolidation around airbnb.

tromp 5y ago

Housing website https://funda.nl https://funda.nl is pretty dominant in the Netherlands. Why would you need to search many agent's websites when nearly all inventory shows up on funda.nl ? I find it much preferable to North American sites like https://realtor.ca https://realtor.ca that think that number of baths is more important than floorspace (which to my utter amazement is often not even available).

brightball 5y ago
That has always shocked me as well. Even houses can be difficult in many cases.
vishnugupta 5y ago
+1 to https://funda.nl https://funda.nl. In fact as a new immigrant I bought house completely through funda. They have nice tie-ups with all the regulatory/certificate providers such as construction report etc., Fantastic experience overall. Selling though is a completely different story it's almost impossible without an agent. And they do provide a valuable service; like photo session, publishing on funda and others, taking care of house-viewing etc.,
Etheryte 5y ago
You're right in that most listings eventually end up on sites such as Funda, Pararius etc. However, almost all offers go online on an agent website first, oftentimes considerably so. Your milage will vary of course, personally I started using agent sites after calling an ad that had been up on Pararius for 5 minutes yielded the response that the viewing list is already full. Turned out it had already been up on the agent page for a day and well-priced offers go fast in desirable areas. It is worth noting that I live in a very contested area, I would hope life is better in smaller places.
- sam_lowry_ 5y ago
  Same in Belgium. Agencies first email new offers to their registered users, then publish on agency websites, and only afterwards publish on immoweb.be. There are sometimes rare jewels published directly by individuals on immoweb.be but the bulk of the offers is trash.

monkeybutton 5y ago

>Given how many people contact a single viewing, you definitely don't want them hitting your personal inbox or phone. This is something I noticed last time I was apartment hunting in Montréal. You'd see a sign or listing, call, and the number would be out of service. As if landlords were using virtual numbers/call forwarding services and just shutting it off once the unit was rented.

dvtrn 5y ago
I might test this one day just to verify it did start with zillow, but after an interesting set of experiences* calling phone numbers for rentals on Zillow I started getting some very odd text messages about bank accounts I don't own and suspicious activity. I don't call phone numbers on listing sites anymore, even if there's a face and an agency next to it. Better off looking up the agency, going to their website an calling that number (which in all three cases of the above, were different than the one on Zillow). --- * by "interesting set of experiences" I mean calling the number on a listing took me to an automated menu and a robotic voice where I had to enter the street number, and then first five letters of a street name so it could "look up" the property I was inquiring about, and connect me to the right seller. Hanging up on that nonsense immediately and calling the leasing agency's number via their website got me a human being in two rings, and the leasing agent for the unit I was interested in after about 45 seconds of hold music.

vishnugupta 5y ago

> From the agent's perspective, it's good to drive people to their company's website rather than one of the big aggregate ones This is strange, wasn't my experience at all. Just about every house I viewed through funda was advertised by agents. And when I put up my house for sale the first thing the agent did was to publish on funda. All the agents care about is selling a house they get a hefty sum (0.3% if I remember correctly) and are totally fine advertising on funda. As a house seeker I dealt with a bunch of agents and the experience wasn't all that bad to be honest. Mind you all this was in early 2019; from what I hear late 2020 onwards the market has gone bananas in the Netherlands and Amsterdam in particular.

unilynx 5y ago
Having just (almost) sold a house in NL, the agent explained that the ordering currently was: - paid searches (even at other agents) - unpaid searches at their own agency - social media - agency website - funda each step would be on the next day, so if you're only watching funda, you're already four days behind