Look forward to the feedback from other EFers! or alternatively, if such a solution already exist
Finding a flat in Zurich/Geneva/Bern/Basel is tough. You have to diligently set up multiple filters on online portals, visit open-houses with 100 others, and keep applying till you get lucky ( alternatively, increase the budget to 3k+ or look @suburbs or pay an agent with a kidney ). No wonder, Homegate has 9million/month unique-visits in a country of 8.2m inhabitants!
Wheres to give away your flat <3months: you advertise (paid) on Homegate to increase views, leading to increasing # of visitations or # of people in your fixed open-house dates, find 3 good matches acceptable to your owner/agency and forward their documentation. (Flatfox seems to have a smoother flow here).
Best bet is to tap into friends/colleagues network to get tips on unadvertised flats which are soon-to-be free, helps the person who is looking & the person who wants to vacate. Question is: can this be replicated on a bigger scale? And potentially help newcomer expats who may have a smaller network?
What if everyone currently looking for a flat (i.e. a seeker) shares info of their current apartment with all other seekers in a closed platform/community? and/or, if available, an expected move date?
Hypothesis : My current flat is someone else's dream apartment, and vice versa
Essentially, on such a platform: Members can view/pick flats which are soon to be free, thus increasing their chance of landing it in future (exclusivity of closed platform) Current tenant at all times has a ready-made list of people wanting to take her apartment right away (Nachmieter) Every new member increases the liquidity in the platform & each member's success in getting a flat will trigger (hopefully) multiple subsequent moves of other members
Closed groups need moderation, who will do this, and will he or she do that for free? And if not where will you find the money for this?
Besides that, there are plenty of such groups and starting a new one is easy just set up another FB group on the subject, or pay a few bucks a month and launch a forum.
Getting the people to use yours is the hard part, either it takes years before you reach a respectable group of users (if ever) or you invest in advertising your new free platform and hope you get so many visitors that the adds will pay of the investment after which the earning can begin (this will be very hard since you have to fight widely accepted and hugely used other platforms.)
Also if your platform would become big it faces the same problems for people who need a new apartment namely that they respond with 100 others, so staying small will not solve the problem, growing big will make you a part of the problem.
Great responses! Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
True that! However: a free advertisement portal is better than paid (e.g. flatfox vs homegate) in certain occasions, to reduce hassle, maximising number of people is not really necessary (e.g. 15 is enough, instead of 100s. you need to provide max 3 solvent applicants) Agreed, which is what having a closed platform would achieve
Uhh! With such an experience I won't either mate!
The platform needs to be free to use; the only currency you pay with is by bringing your current flat to the platform.
Yes, thus my thought to level the playing field a bit
If this really solves a big pain point & truly adds value, ain't difficult to monetize. Have a few thoughts ... if it ever reaches that stage, problem I would rather have.
'Party bringing a scarce resource (flat) has to pay to advertise', i.e. the current predominant model is a broken one, and has the characteristics you point out. But when there is a cost/limitation to applying to many apartments, I believe, this problem would cease to exist and the model is easily scalable.
Thanks and really appreciate the discussion and inputs - love the challenge of finding solution. Do let me know where my argument might be flawed or can be strengthened ..
Problem you wil face is that popular housing will easily find a new tenant due to mouth to mouth among friends, work etc.. We almost all know people who look for a house
Big companies just want one platform for all their offerings regardless of popularity.
People and companies are willing to pay some for big exposure on one platform that solves all their needs.
How will you finance the start (as in how will you draw a big enough user base) so that people will keep using it. If the offerings or the people looking are to little in amount people will just have one or two looks and not come back.