http://www.skipbrokers.com/

http://www.nofeerentals.com/

http://www.rent-direct.com/

it is good to see more people trying to help the cause though.

Have broker commissions come down since then? No.

If you get right down to it, the main value of a broker is to show up at a property and open the door so you can check it out. I’d be willing to pay about $25 per appt for that service. You don’t need someone college educated, just bonded.

So riddle me this brokerman, why is it that brokers (and their fees) don’t exist in other markets? Just because you do a lot of legwork doesn’t mean it was necessary or that it was a particularly valuable service to consumers.

NYC brokers are a cartel that is slowly dying, as all cartels do in the long run.

This is news on Techcrunch now? A no-fee apartment listing site? Obviously you don’t know anything about the New York city rental market. As others have said, this is the same as every other no-fee listing site.

Whoa! They stick a google map on there! Oh, the innovation! It’s amazing.

There are so many interesting sites TC could cover whose founders don’t have the YC endorsement, and many YC companies are flawed from the start (even if the founders are smart and the idea once seemed strong). TC writers need to find interesting stuff going on (through sources other than Twitter) and contact people on their own accord.

It’s a shame to see so much TC space wasted on repetitive rant-ish articles about trivial events in Twitter/iPhone-dom.

There are lots of takes on improving the Craigslist housing experience, which in it’s raw state is miserable. Mine is http://www.cribq.com .

I get what they’re trying to do about Craigslist, but how is RentHop’s approach different from the OTHER “no fee” sites? Rent-Direct, SkipBrokers, NoFeeRentals?

Is the difference that RentHop is free to consumers? Ok, how do you make money? Ads? Ok, what’s their RPM and market size assumptions? Let’s say they get $30 RPM (at best) when you have 1 market (btw, the whole no fee thing doesn’t exist outside NYC and Boston), and uniques of 100k/mo. So we’re talking $30 X 100 = $3,000/mo revenue tops.

Sorry to be harsh, but the problem with these markets isn’t that nobody has created alternative sites to list no fee apartments.

I noticed anyone can post an ad. If they are positioning themselves as “vetted listings”, they should quit that practice. 419 spam is a massive problem and will quickly destroy the value of their service to consumers.

One useful thing they could do would be to focus on being the most spam-free site for NYC no fee listings. Nobody would probably even mind if they copied listings off Craigslist, so long as they vetted every one to make sure it wasn’t some kind of fee-based broker come on. But then the challenge is how do you find, verify, and copy the listings quickly enough that users of your site aren’t at a disadvantage?

Or maybe they could focus on being the place where consumers define what kind of rental they want and spam-free listings get sent to them instantly via Twitter or SMS. So the value prop is all about speed, which can make a big difference in a low vacancy market.

If they provide added value, I’m more than happy to pay. For example, back when there were simply no good apartments in NYC, a broker was a fantastic resource to find unlisted vacancies and were well worth the money.

If apartments are sitting on the open market, there’s no reason for a broker. Landlords can handle paperwork and background checks easily, and can get market directly to prospective tenants (which is what this site is trying to help with). It’s a good thing.