an airbnb for rentals

A thing I want in the world

TLDR: What AirBnB currently is, but for long-term rentals.

So, in a bid to make Singapore, the Group House a reality, I've been house-hunting. And my god is SF renting a pain in the ass. (And yes, American spelling. An American problem.)

This has involved (slightly) elevated stress levels for the previous month, an attempted and failed coup for a house that we really wanted, solving some really underspecified optimization problem (we'll know when we have AGI because it'll be able to find us the perfect house), hours of very precious researcher time spent scrolling Zillow and Craigslist and apartments.com, self-guided tours of luxury battery cages that pass as apartments in downtown, roommate scouting and principle-writing, a really quite lovely landlord, many a GPT-query reading lease and figuring out mould, and now a tentatively-signed month-by-month lease.

Compare this to finding an AirBnB (a requirement, actually, while I looked for a damn house). Log on to AirBnB.com, enter in the specified dates, fill in the form, add credit card, done. No hassle.

Zillow is trying to be end-to-end. And it's close. The UI is good — so much so it became the default place we checked.

I can imagine the market for buying houses is so much worse. I wouldn't trust a leasing agent. Seems ripe for collusion. The repeated game that your buyers/sellers agent is playing is not with you, but with their colleagues. Apparently they sometimes represent both ends of the transaction?

My pitch is this: AirBnB for Rentals. Someone, please.

Make it the best app for both the landlords, and the leasees. The housing market is the biggest in the US?

The problem is with long-term stays, of course, is that they are one-shot. There are many fewer opportunities to engage.

Your biggest priority is getting the most people on it, as quickly as possible. Two-sided network effects! Landlords want access to the largest customer base, and leasees want the most choice. You want to be the default place. Even if this means growing at a loss.

For the landlords:

Vet the leasees. Make sure they're good for their word. Ask for the rent upfront, no exceptions.

Strongly punish any squatters. Lobby the state governments to reduce renters rights, in this particular regard.

Draft the leases for them. Help them figure out insurance / other legal obligations. Allow them to upload photos and a full description, and use an AI model to process.

In general standardize the terms. Always make renters pay for utilities. Offer the service of a leasing agent too, where a person just comes to your house, gets all the documents for you, and handles literally everything. Imagine the landlord is an EXCEPTIONALLY busy person who does not have time to handle key hand-off etc.

For the leasees:

Make year long leases the new norm, but always offer month-by-month for a transparent extra price. Have first preference for the people who are already in the house.

Include a history and contact information of previous leasees.

Not sure what to do with the furniture. Maybe do a partnership with Ikea so that they'll just fully furnish the place in the default, cheap, IKEA style, with the barebones needed, for a set price. Surely it can't be that hard.

Normalize one week / one-month trial stays. Do not lock them into a year.

Combine it with directorysf. Make it end-to-end. Your ideal market is someone who is looking to move to SF/a big city with a certain budget, and then it serves them all the houses + roommates that they might want. Make it an everything app for housing.

Don't make it spammy. The reason that eg. realtor.com spams you is because it makes a HUGE difference if they get your once-a-year business. You should treat it as a repeated game, even if it is not. You want your customers to love you and recommend you to their friends.

A single, unified platform could have so many advantages. If you wanted to reduce homelessness, you could give them vouchers!