So, I think a decade or so ago (maybe more), the bigger corpos went full mask off, and stopped even pretending they cared about anything but making more money. Screw the employees, screw the customer, screw the regulatory departments. Money only.
It seems this is filtering down to more and more businesses.
I am not sure how it is over there. Here in the UK the number of rental properties has dropped drastically. I suspect, it’s because of a few changes legally here that make it not quite so lucrative to buy-to-let any more. In any case, rather than bring house prices down, it just made the rentals still on the market go up in price. As an example today for my postcode there are over 80 properties for sale (excluding retirement/shared properties) and only around 10 for rent with the same filters. It used to be closer to half the number of rental properties up until around 5 or so years ago.
If there’s a seller’s (well landlord’s/renter’s I guess) market, they could for sure make people pay to get an edge on gaining an increasingly rare rental. It’s downright scummy. But, I expect nothing less any more.
But you suuuurely tip when you look at a rental?
Did you tip when you wrote this comment?
I’ve got a tip for you.
(I’m referring to the tip of my penis.)
That’s the sex thing, right?
Not in my case, no.
bites the tip
Of course, but I unfortunately cannot tip you because my payment processor doesn’t allow to tip NSFW comments.
Look, we’re not asking for much. Just the tip.
This mf out here trying to swipe Visa or MasterCard in the stripper’s butt crack.
Idiot.
It has a chip. You insert it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were at least one person on the planet with a card reader/simcard combo implanted in their buttcheek for those occasions. I’m also pretty sure that Visa/Mastercard would have no issues with that, but if it’s a gaming storefront then they are “omg”-ing
There’s a 20% suggested tip on the $250 non refundable application deposit?
$250 non refundable application deposit?
LMAO I’d sooner torch the rental property than pay just to APPLY to hopefully live there.
Rents are too high for a single income to cover anymore, so I’ve been looking for roommates. Even the websites about finding roommates expect you to pay.
To be clear, they have a free tier - but unless you pay, you can’t read the messages you receive. You can read the first line, but the rest is locked. I gave up with one place because the boomer trying to rent a room refused to send me an email. I told him three times to please just email me his message because I couldn’t read it on the site, but because he could read messages fine, he thought it was a setting he had to change. He kept responding with “Okay try now” and didn’t seem to understand that he can’t “settings” other people out from behind a paywall.
All he had to do was copy/paste his message and send it a different way, but he wouldn’t do it. I eventually gave up because the thought of living with someone that’s unable to follow such simple directions sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.
Anyway, point is, even if you’re so poor that you need to seek out roommates, you’re still expected to pay a subscription. I don’t even know what to do anymore.
If you were replying with an email address odds are he was not getting it due to the site actively trying to keep people on their site.
Probably. Not much I can do. I’m not paying for a subscription. If anyone has any advice for finding roommates otherwise, I would very much appreciate it!
Why did people stop using craigslist to advertise rentals?
It is just the old bulletin board / classified newspaper niche, usually there’s more than one venue in urban areas. In a lot of Canada people also use kijiji etc. I am not including fb marketplace in that, though if you can access Meta websites, too many people still use that.
Scammers go to fb marketplace over Craigslist because meta is slow to react if at all, while Craigslist is known to easily and freely offer information to law enforcement.
Yes, friends don’t let friends use Meta products.
Seriously, could get you stabbed in a police station parking lot or something…
That is a possibility with nearly any classified listing and always has been.
Situational awareness and good street sense are necessary. Bring a friend or be as public as you can, etc.
Most online scams, including phishing and tech support scams, are variations on ancient techniques.
Thank you so much! Craigslist is something I had completely forgotten about. I dropped off Facebook years ago and unfortunately don’t live in Canada, but Craigslist is a great suggestion and I’m perusing it now. You may have just saved me from living in my car (again.)
Seriously, thank you!
A client at work which is a local property management company (big enough to have 2 part time employees and one full time property maanger) lists all of their properties on Craigslist as well as many more commercial sites, so it’s not just mom and pops on there
Edit: another option is to call up a given property during business hours to ask about availability. Chances are your call will go to the property management company and they’ll have more properties than just the one building you saw the number on
You go! Also check for more niche classified sites, like specific to universities etc.
Absolutely. A site charging to read messages will most definitely censor out emails and phone numbers and will have it in their ToS that you’re not allowed to take conversations outside the platform.
Sounds like a market ready for disruption
Isn’t this what Craigslist is for?
I’ve had decent luck with CL in the past for rentals, but understand that it’s generally: an illegal listing (eg no windows or the like for fire egress), sex traffickers targeting desperate women, or scammers - and you need to be able to jump on the legit leads ASAP.
But yes as a renter, sifting through Craigslist was vastly preferable to paying whatever some private equity firm decided “market rates” are (we are the market, teehee 🤭) for a hovel in a 1+5 complex, or dealing with the myriad of cutouts that paywall listings or communications like the OP.
At least with Craigslist you know its not the platform scamming you or helping to scam you. Solid website.
In the romulan disruptor kind of way?
What is this app actually called? I can’t id it from screenshot, and every comment here seems to be talking about it without actually naming it.
I don’t even blame that at this point.
Useful idiots were always proud to pay for shit they could be getting for free, why would they all of a sudden get mad about it?
Remember to pay your netflix subscription instead of using free streaming sites that require no sign up, no credit card, and have more content.
This is why I’ll boondock until its completely illegal. Then if they don’t force me into the gray pod then I’m going feral hobo until I die in a fight with a racoon over some berries.
What’s the biggest thing you miss? The idea certainly appeals to me; you have to pay to exist as a person in a building but there’s free parking everywhere. And you can do a bit of nomadism.
A nice shitter and a bathtub. I have a toilet and do shit in the woods as much as possible. But a reliable porcelain throne feels great. I can realese some genuine horrors and its just gone in a flush or two. I also like just laying down in a nice hot bath with some bubble bath, little scented Epsom salt, drink a beer and smoke a j.
I’m going feral hobo until I die in a fight with a racoon over some berries.
Stop, my brother! We are not enemies! There is enough berry for all, if we but put down our differences and turn our attention to the dreaded hording bourgeois!
I know this is funny, but to anyone reading this comment, I implore you:
This is wild, but I have at least one guess where they might be coming from with this idea.
At one point I had to move out of a house that I owned for a while so I wanted to let it.
People who want to rent can be super flaky and dishonest. Seriously 4 out of 5 or more are like this.
They make appointments then don’t show up and ghost you. Or they call 5 minutes late to say they’ll be there in 3 hours.
Or everything seems good until you do credit checks and find they were evicted from the last place and haven’t made a payment on their credit card for 3 years plus they have a felony conviction from a few years ago for beating up some guy.
Or when checking their income is sufficient, their boss says yeah, they used to work here but not anymore.
Potential renters never tell you this stuff until you already put hours into talking and going out to show the place to them.
I’m just a regular guy with a job (who does pay his bills) so this takes a lot of time, fuck that noise.
Basically charging people $5 will make them not come if they know they won’t qualify, saving everybody the time.
From the renters perspective they have the risk of paying money to find out that the rental post was misleading, the location is crappy, etc. on top of their wasted time.
Charging for an application that involves paying a third party to process? Sketchy, but understandable.
Charging for them to even look at the property? Ridiculous.
If it’s mealy five buck, refundable on contract fee to weed out the unserious, I’m fine with that. Look at your own example, “location is crappy”. That’s on the person looking if they couldn’t figure that out ahead of time. I can see a rental post being misleading, but having rented a dozen or so places, never seen anything unexpected.
Ever sold anything on FaceBook Marketplace? Do NOT put anything out there for free. You’ll be overrun by assholes, just as in the post you’re replying to. If you charge $5 or $10, those people actually show up.
I agree, shitty landlords exist as well and try to scam people into coming. That’s why I’ll never rent out a place again, on either side, if I can avoid it.
Boo fucking hoo it requires a bit of work to be a landlord.
If it’s so much work for you, sell the house. It’s not like you’re living in it. Income takes work. It sounds like you want people to just give you money while you’re not working.
Is this real?
agencies: “housing is just not unaffordable enough. I wonder what else we can do to contribute?”
Do the unlimited and have constant tours for all 30 days. Get friends to individually do the same. Pester the ever living fuck out of them.
r/maliciouscompliance
Oops, bad habit.¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You should make a Lemmy alternative. Could become useful, you know, with all the ongoing fascism.
Just had to do this a few weeks ago. They have you taken a pic of your driver’s license, provide your SSN & run a credit check on the spot. Then they charge you to tour the place.
A very “fuck you, I’m getting paid regardless” mentality from rental companies.
My wife and I were looking at realtors and one told us we would need to provide our credit card info to look at properties, and I just laughed and said “go fuck yourself” and hung up.
The only valid response, IMO.
The fact that people actually pay this shit is infuriating.
I had someone actually try to get me to pay to see rental property well. Mine were a little mote greedy and wanted $30.
I told them I work too hard for my money to be handing it out like party favors.
What the actual fuck
Just more rent seeking behavior.
Last few months… Grifting has seriously accelerated
Companies have been accelerating their grifting at an alarming rate since the COVID days
We’re in the New Gilded Age
Indeed. They are using that floosing the zome tactic trump did with politics.
Sadly it appears to be working. Working class cant muster a back lash, they don’t know what to lash out at
i believe its russian, firehose of falsehood. going back to goebbels too.
shrinkflation, cheapflation really took off.
Why would they sell/rent when they make so much money on tours?
The idea is proably just to filter out people who aren’t serious / not gonna show up.
I can’t imgine it’s about the money
Its common to pay a down payment to hold a rental, this is just a shittier version of that.
I mean really just spruce up one unit, charge for tours, charge for applications, why even bother renting?
I mean places already charge just to submit an app.
People do that, its pretty clear cut fraud though so it usually doesnt work out the best in the end.
Soon you’ll have to buy a subscription to tour rental houses.
Well I need the 24/7 phone and chat support. What if I have a question about my ability to tour a property at 2am?
It would be tempting to get that plan and call them at the stupidest hours possible. But it’s probably outsourced to India or just AI
It’s outsourced to what the company calls AI however it’s just some people in India. Everyone except for you is making money in that scenario.
