Take my thoughts less as objections and more as opportunities. If a business can solve many or most of them, they might prosper. No reason to think it’s impossible to improve on the current rental industry, but you’d want to think through the current set of issues methodically.
AirBnb doesn’t promise anything more than a regular hotel experience in a new setting. OKCupid doesn’t promise anything at all really, except a supply of singles looking to date.
We already have robust services that supply both rental properties and people looking for housemates (the roommate equivalents of AirBnb and OKCupid).
It strikes me that the value you’re suggesting a company could provide is a positive housemate experience, achieved through some sort of algorithm or a setup in which housemates could somehow try each other out as housemates in a flexible way before they commit.
I am highly skeptical of the idea that even the most sophisticated algorithmic matching software can provide better housemate relationships through better matching than is already available. I don’t think any dating apps match people well romantically. The most effective approach with them is to just go on a lot of dates and see if anyone clicks.
It would be more interesting to me if a company figured out a way where people could move in together, stay as long as they liked, move out, try another group, with minimal hassle.
Perhaps an apartment building with pods of furnished rooms connected to a common area. People make profiles, get on the waiting list for an open pod, and the current pod mates can vote on who they want to accept next. They can’t kick out a pod mate they don’t like, but they could switch away to a different pod.
The rates are hotel prices, maybe double what the house normally rents for. When an entire pod clicks, they can move out at their leisure to a rental apartment or house.
It seems to me that this could add value to a typical hotel experience, while using a similar business model. AirBnb already provides a solution to the trust problem of strangers cohabitating.
If this kind of business existed in my city at an affordable price, I might try it. Hotels are about twice as expensive as rental apartments, though, so I imagine this would be a pretty costly investment.
You’d want lots of options for people to live with, which necessitates owning a lot of rental properties.
To avoid that problem, perhaps you could connect with landlords, offering them a cut of the profits in exchange for partnering with your service. You help them manage the properties, to cut the hassle for the landlord, and they’re able to charge higher rates, closer to hotel prices, in exchange for granting this level of flexibility to their renters.
My estimate is that you could raise prices by $4,000/mo on a six bedroom house, with the landlord keeping 25%-50% of the increase. You’d need to give them an incentive to take on an extra potential hassle and try something new.
I suppose there’s merit in a more detailed sorting algorithm. OKCupid may not be able to detect your soul mate, but it helps prevent a match between a 57 year old gay man in Seattle and a 22 year old lesbian in Austin, which is useful. I imagine a better algorithm could at least prevent mismatches like these.
The challenge is that you’d need to ensure a steady stream of clients. Otherwise, the property owners might lose money despite the higher rates. This could be hard if a pod was occupied by a person with an unpopular profile.
Perhaps you could rely on the high rates of the service to eventually incentivize them to move out. You could also put temporarily lower rates on unoccupied rooms to incentivize people to move in.
This service would probably also need to deal with people treating it like a hotel, which could dilute the utility for people treating it as a room mate try before you buy service. You could partly solve that with branding. In any case, a paying client is a good client.
Take my thoughts less as objections and more as opportunities. If a business can solve many or most of them, they might prosper. No reason to think it’s impossible to improve on the current rental industry, but you’d want to think through the current set of issues methodically.
AirBnb doesn’t promise anything more than a regular hotel experience in a new setting. OKCupid doesn’t promise anything at all really, except a supply of singles looking to date.
We already have robust services that supply both rental properties and people looking for housemates (the roommate equivalents of AirBnb and OKCupid).
It strikes me that the value you’re suggesting a company could provide is a positive housemate experience, achieved through some sort of algorithm or a setup in which housemates could somehow try each other out as housemates in a flexible way before they commit.
I am highly skeptical of the idea that even the most sophisticated algorithmic matching software can provide better housemate relationships through better matching than is already available. I don’t think any dating apps match people well romantically. The most effective approach with them is to just go on a lot of dates and see if anyone clicks.
It would be more interesting to me if a company figured out a way where people could move in together, stay as long as they liked, move out, try another group, with minimal hassle.
Perhaps an apartment building with pods of furnished rooms connected to a common area. People make profiles, get on the waiting list for an open pod, and the current pod mates can vote on who they want to accept next. They can’t kick out a pod mate they don’t like, but they could switch away to a different pod.
The rates are hotel prices, maybe double what the house normally rents for. When an entire pod clicks, they can move out at their leisure to a rental apartment or house.
It seems to me that this could add value to a typical hotel experience, while using a similar business model. AirBnb already provides a solution to the trust problem of strangers cohabitating.
If this kind of business existed in my city at an affordable price, I might try it. Hotels are about twice as expensive as rental apartments, though, so I imagine this would be a pretty costly investment.
You’d want lots of options for people to live with, which necessitates owning a lot of rental properties.
To avoid that problem, perhaps you could connect with landlords, offering them a cut of the profits in exchange for partnering with your service. You help them manage the properties, to cut the hassle for the landlord, and they’re able to charge higher rates, closer to hotel prices, in exchange for granting this level of flexibility to their renters.
My estimate is that you could raise prices by $4,000/mo on a six bedroom house, with the landlord keeping 25%-50% of the increase. You’d need to give them an incentive to take on an extra potential hassle and try something new.
I suppose there’s merit in a more detailed sorting algorithm. OKCupid may not be able to detect your soul mate, but it helps prevent a match between a 57 year old gay man in Seattle and a 22 year old lesbian in Austin, which is useful. I imagine a better algorithm could at least prevent mismatches like these.
The challenge is that you’d need to ensure a steady stream of clients. Otherwise, the property owners might lose money despite the higher rates. This could be hard if a pod was occupied by a person with an unpopular profile.
Perhaps you could rely on the high rates of the service to eventually incentivize them to move out. You could also put temporarily lower rates on unoccupied rooms to incentivize people to move in.
This service would probably also need to deal with people treating it like a hotel, which could dilute the utility for people treating it as a room mate try before you buy service. You could partly solve that with branding. In any case, a paying client is a good client.