The conclusion from this little study, is that a girl with an italian name, gets an 90% answer rate, a guy with an arab name and is younger than 25 gets, 1% answer rate. The master of all, is the young munich guy who is around 25
Sadly, this doesn't surprise me.
Across Europe, numerous anti-discrimination laws have been (rightfully) enacted, but it just pushes any inclination to discriminate that might exist into private. Oh, we "didn't receive" your e-mail, or oh, I "didn't see" your résumé.. This is why some people got upset about Google+ demanding real names and similar "use your real name" policies elsewhere, as even a name alone can be a huge trigger for discriminatory behavior.
Anti-discrimination laws do not solve any problems, they make them worse. If someone is not willing to hire a person because of their ethnicity/color/sex/age/whatever, a law will not make him do it. Finding an excuse is too easy and it is basically impossible to prove such things in court. I recommend watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzXXvUjg8Fo
There's certainly a good amount of racism in Munich (it's really best for a lot of people that you can't understand most drunks around here), and realtors generally aren't the creme of the crop of basic goodness anyway.
But I think a part of it comes down to a higher chance of young people with Arab names either being students (short-term, prone to be loud and messy no matter where they're from) or more likely to bring in additional residents. And most landlord's I've known would prefer if nobody would live at all in the apartment at all...
I don't think 25-year old "Hanz" would be the prime candidate for successes, try faking a 40-something with a job for BMW/Siemens (directly, no freelance/contract) who only needs it to sleep during the weekdays and drives home to his Stuttgart home for the weekends.
I think it has more to do with age than to do with origin. When I was looking for a place in the UK after getting my first job and earning decent money I was straight up told by an agency that many landlords wouldn't even consider me because I was "too young to rent a house", even though I had the money for it. Age discrimination is perfectly legal everywhere(apart from job interviews maybe) - think car insurance - so it's very easily used as an excuse for everything. I also think that's wrong.
I've noticed something similar here in NYC as I've been apartment hunting. There are postings that will ask for a link to your facebook/instagram/twitter before they'll even show you the property. I'm not saying that it's always motivated by discriminatory behavior, but if it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck...
Anti-discrimination laws just mean people get punished for openly discriminating; it doesn't change the culture, at least not until the law slowly turns into a societal norm. Which, for some people or societies, just won't happen in this generation.
Can you use the law to punish someone for not responding to an email from 21 year old Mohammed asking if he can rent your apartment?
Renting out an apartment can lead to some very difficult situations (basically because the law isn't going to help you get out of them).
Everyone I know that rents out properties here in Belgium applies a very strict filter when selecting tenants; I would do the same and not feel bad about it for a second.
My sympathies, I lived in Munich 15 years ago and it was a nightmare to find a place even back then. I've heard it's only gotten worse.
We (Nestoria.de) aggregate listings of most of the players in real estate in Germany (IS24, immowelt, immonet, süddeutsche, others) and offer an API. We also offer an API of price trends (ie what the avg rent is in an area and if it's going up or down).
Wish I knew it when I was moving to Munich 6 months ago. Sounds like a tough job, some of those sites aren't structured very well. I thought about automating it too, but it seemed like too much hassle back then.
I have to say though, when you are a german couple, have a double income with no children/no pets, its not that hard to find something. I don't envy the rest though!
Wow, good to know! I'm currently looking for a flat in Berlin and will definitely use the site. Let's see if I also write some automation around it as the OP apparently did :)
Question: how does nestoria make money? Do you get some cut from immowelt etc. in case you end up renting/buying?
If I search for appartments to let in germany, the flyout menu only offers to filter for buying prices. See screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/BmUd4bh.png
I do not know about the situation in Munich, but I spent lots of time looking for a place in Bonn last year and from my experience the approach from the article has one serious flaw:
While the real estate websites offer contact forms to send e-mails, many people hate dealing with e-mails. Landlords and even "professional" real estate agents often ignore e-mails. Sometimes it is because of the sheer volume they get, but I suspect often it is just that they never really adapted to the medium.
Many (most?) ads include a phone number. And I have had far better results by calling than by sending an e-mail. You should of course be one of the first people to call...
I can confirm. I discovered this fact very quickly when I was looking for a flat in Munich in 2009. Almost no replies to emails, I got a pretty good response rate when I called or texted the people. I spoke some German so getting a viewing wasn't that complicated but the competition was big - sometimes tens of people queuing to view the apartment when I got there and I could tell they would typically prefer a German person over a Czech guy speaking imperfect German.
Reversing the problem is also a good idea, I know some people had success buying an ad in Sueddeutsche Zeitung. At one point I also put up printed ads in supermarkets in the areas I was considering and while the response rate was very low, I got at least some response.
There are also some agencies that in fact own flats and rent them without requiring the 2.5 x rent fee.
I was going at first to agree with you based on my experience with Berlin: when the ads there give a particular date in which the apartment will be shown, those interested have to fill a form right after seeing it. So in this situation there's no incentive for the owner to check the e-mails.
However, that doesn't explain why both the Italian girl and Hanz from Munich got over a 90% answer rate - if they didn't check the e-mails, the response rate should have been lower.
So while I agree about that one flaw, I don't really think it affects the results that much.
We tried to rent an appartment in Cologne. Took us nearly a year. I would never again try to rent from private landlords.
But once we decided it's okay for us to pay provision we got a nice new flat from a company within 2 month. The credit of the provision basically raises the rent for the first few years, but at least we didn't have to deal with landlords anymore. There were too much forms, credit checks and awkward talks.
I'm in the business of renting out flats. Not in Munich. Sadly, I'm in a lower-demand market, and I wouldn't rush to classify this as "discrimination".
It is very very difficult to deal with bad tenants. They exist, a lot of them. And it is very very difficult to know who is a bad tenant through these websites and Facebook groups. The problem here is an information problem. If these sites gave the person applying for a flat the chance to give information to prove they are good enough, that would be a blessing, both for (good) renters and for landlords.
I am not talking about financial information. I would be pretty happy with some references that would indicate the person is honest and serious and easy to deal with, even if they don't have much money; some access to Facebook profile and posts or other data available at the internet would do the job for me.
I was recently looking for a new flat in Berlin, and I didn't have the same type of problem the OP had, but once I had an interview, I had to make a decision on whether I wanted the flat or not quite quickly. So I used a variant of the optimal strategy of the secretary problem[0]: Decided on a rough maximal number of flats I wanted to visit N, visit N/e flats without real intention of renting, to sample the market, and then take the first flat that is better than all of the previously viewed flats. Worked out remarkably well for me.
I'm one of the founders at OpenRent (UK rental site [1]), and loved your post. We face this kind of problem daily, and have tools in place to make sure our landlords reply to all tenants - even if it's to provide a reason why they're not suitable.
We're constantly looking at better ways to solve this problem and improve the tenant experience - and your post will prove an excellent bit of anecdotal insight for us. Our data is similar, showing even just a name can impact response rate!
To those suggesting all applicants should provide more data (facebook / linkedin / credit history), it's not always that simple. Still in the UK many renters don't have an online "presence". And whilst that may not be a problem for landlords with "hot" properties, putting off tenants for landlords with little demand is an absolute no go for us - sure, we want applicants to be of a high quality, but just because they don't have that information doesn't mean they aren't suitable.
We think allowing tenants to provide more information, whilst supporting all application levels is key - but making it clear that the more data you provide the higher your chances of success and a quick response (even if it's a simple no) isn't always easy.
I pay less than €800 for my 45m² 3 subway stops away from the central station. And I found it by talking to people within 3 months ... :) Paying more than €800 for a small room means even by Munich standards just that you are getting ripped off.
Getting an answer is only the first step. Afterwards you are invited with around 20-30 other persons to visit the flat. It's like cattle looking for a new shed.
When I was looking for a flat together with my girlfriend 3 years ago, we got several viewings of our own together with the agent.
This seems to depend completely on whether the commission is paid by the owner or the tenant - the only time we had a "crowded" viewing (but still only about 5 other people) was for a flat where the commission was paid by the owner.
Another factor might have been that we were looking in the outskirts of Munich - if you think you absolutely need to live in Schwabing or Glockenbachviertel, it's your own damn fault.
Two years ago I was in a similar situation. I had 6 weeks to find a fully furnished apartment in Munich from 800km away. For me the response rate for furnished apartments was 100%, although some simply said the apartment has been rented out already.
I also turned to crawling. I regularly crawled IS24's furnished apartment section and put new entries into a Google Fusion Table. That way I could filter on fields and see the apartments on a map at the same time. This wasn't automated as much as the original poster's solution. But my main requirement was that the apartment be near a subway station of a line that stops at my place of work, which is not that easy to automate.
After about a week I found an apartment that was rented out by the owner directly (none of that agent fee nonsense). I was the first to contact the guy - a few minutes after it was posted. I had to decide if I take it the same day. Based only on pictures... It was a good deal. Colleagues of mine were paying MUCH MORE and got MUCH LESS.
We want to buy something in Munich and indeed, even if you are prepared to spend a million or more, it is extremely hard to get an invitation to visit a place (Even if you are in the right age and your wife is an italian girl, like mine).
It would be really cool to outwit the real estate dealers in the way you did it. I keep thinking. Ideas are welcome.
> Appartment rental agencies cost roughly 3 times the monthly rent, which accounts for around 2000€. No need to say this was a no go for me as I prefer keeping that money and making something good out of it.
As far as I know this fee will soon have to be paid by the landlord rather than the potential tenant (by german law).
Sometimes, the real estate agents already take it from both sides.
Indeed, there is a law in preparation, that you pay, if you contacted the agent to find a flat, but the owner pays, if he asked the agent to find a tenant.
I tell you what will happen: you'll never get a contract to rent a place, unless you sign that the agent worked for you, not for the owner.
I was very surprised to find Caracas at #9 in the linked article of most expensive cities in the world; Venezuela having a pro capita GDP of around $13K I would have expected the cost of life to be quite low.
Does anyone have first hand experience of that, or an explanation of why it is so?
It's an oil country. I'd not be surprised to find it's full of million-dollar apartments driving the average up. Maybe the low wage workers live beyond the city boundary, or in favelas that are excluded from the average.
The study was probably done at the governments official exchange rate which is far off from the black market rate. Which would make it seem more expensive.
And what about politicians demanding 40% is female, while only 10% of the candidates are female... That is actually one silly law (i'm not trying to discriminate, but it's kinda unfair for finding the best candidates).
I've just finished doing the same for Edinburgh, UK and share many of the OP's frustrations. The monopoly that many letting agencies have in that they are also managing apartments adds to the shortage of accommodation in Europe's largest cities. Unlike in previous years, besides a worsening of the availability of accommodation I have also noticed an increase in scammers this year (i.e. people copying pictures from other city's agencies and trying to convince people to pay pre-deposits or application/administrative fees to 'secure keys').
What was your dataset of people who were applying? If a girl with an Italian name gets 90% and a guy with an arab name and is younger than 25 gets 1%, what about the in-between?
[+] [-] petercooper|11 years ago|reply
Sadly, this doesn't surprise me.
Across Europe, numerous anti-discrimination laws have been (rightfully) enacted, but it just pushes any inclination to discriminate that might exist into private. Oh, we "didn't receive" your e-mail, or oh, I "didn't see" your résumé.. This is why some people got upset about Google+ demanding real names and similar "use your real name" policies elsewhere, as even a name alone can be a huge trigger for discriminatory behavior.
[+] [-] sauere|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhd|11 years ago|reply
But I think a part of it comes down to a higher chance of young people with Arab names either being students (short-term, prone to be loud and messy no matter where they're from) or more likely to bring in additional residents. And most landlord's I've known would prefer if nobody would live at all in the apartment at all...
I don't think 25-year old "Hanz" would be the prime candidate for successes, try faking a 40-something with a job for BMW/Siemens (directly, no freelance/contract) who only needs it to sleep during the weekdays and drives home to his Stuttgart home for the weekends.
[+] [-] gambiting|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philangist|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stef25|11 years ago|reply
Renting out an apartment can lead to some very difficult situations (basically because the law isn't going to help you get out of them).
Everyone I know that rents out properties here in Belgium applies a very strict filter when selecting tenants; I would do the same and not feel bad about it for a second.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ilovefood|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hessenwolf|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twobits|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freyfogle|11 years ago|reply
We (Nestoria.de) aggregate listings of most of the players in real estate in Germany (IS24, immowelt, immonet, süddeutsche, others) and offer an API. We also offer an API of price trends (ie what the avg rent is in an area and if it's going up or down).
Enjoy: http://www.nestoria.co.uk/help/api-search-listings
[+] [-] MrBuddyCasino|11 years ago|reply
I have to say though, when you are a german couple, have a double income with no children/no pets, its not that hard to find something. I don't envy the rest though!
[+] [-] senand|11 years ago|reply
Question: how does nestoria make money? Do you get some cut from immowelt etc. in case you end up renting/buying?
[+] [-] koyote|11 years ago|reply
How do you compare to the more popular sites such as Zoopla?
[+] [-] stef25|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tucosan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corv|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidroetzel|11 years ago|reply
While the real estate websites offer contact forms to send e-mails, many people hate dealing with e-mails. Landlords and even "professional" real estate agents often ignore e-mails. Sometimes it is because of the sheer volume they get, but I suspect often it is just that they never really adapted to the medium.
Many (most?) ads include a phone number. And I have had far better results by calling than by sending an e-mail. You should of course be one of the first people to call...
[+] [-] jkbyc|11 years ago|reply
Reversing the problem is also a good idea, I know some people had success buying an ad in Sueddeutsche Zeitung. At one point I also put up printed ads in supermarkets in the areas I was considering and while the response rate was very low, I got at least some response.
There are also some agencies that in fact own flats and rent them without requiring the 2.5 x rent fee.
[+] [-] probably_wrong|11 years ago|reply
However, that doesn't explain why both the Italian girl and Hanz from Munich got over a 90% answer rate - if they didn't check the e-mails, the response rate should have been lower.
So while I agree about that one flaw, I don't really think it affects the results that much.
[+] [-] cuillevel3|11 years ago|reply
But once we decided it's okay for us to pay provision we got a nice new flat from a company within 2 month. The credit of the provision basically raises the rent for the first few years, but at least we didn't have to deal with landlords anymore. There were too much forms, credit checks and awkward talks.
[+] [-] fiatjaf|11 years ago|reply
It is very very difficult to deal with bad tenants. They exist, a lot of them. And it is very very difficult to know who is a bad tenant through these websites and Facebook groups. The problem here is an information problem. If these sites gave the person applying for a flat the chance to give information to prove they are good enough, that would be a blessing, both for (good) renters and for landlords.
I am not talking about financial information. I would be pretty happy with some references that would indicate the person is honest and serious and easy to deal with, even if they don't have much money; some access to Facebook profile and posts or other data available at the internet would do the job for me.
[+] [-] phreeza|11 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
[+] [-] dazbradbury|11 years ago|reply
We're constantly looking at better ways to solve this problem and improve the tenant experience - and your post will prove an excellent bit of anecdotal insight for us. Our data is similar, showing even just a name can impact response rate!
To those suggesting all applicants should provide more data (facebook / linkedin / credit history), it's not always that simple. Still in the UK many renters don't have an online "presence". And whilst that may not be a problem for landlords with "hot" properties, putting off tenants for landlords with little demand is an absolute no go for us - sure, we want applicants to be of a high quality, but just because they don't have that information doesn't mean they aren't suitable.
We think allowing tenants to provide more information, whilst supporting all application levels is key - but making it clear that the more data you provide the higher your chances of success and a quick response (even if it's a simple no) isn't always easy.
[1] - https://www.openrent.co.uk
[+] [-] fiatjaf|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fiatjaf|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dildog|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kiro|11 years ago|reply
Depressing.
[+] [-] joyofdata|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] valevk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brazzy|11 years ago|reply
This seems to depend completely on whether the commission is paid by the owner or the tenant - the only time we had a "crowded" viewing (but still only about 5 other people) was for a flat where the commission was paid by the owner.
Another factor might have been that we were looking in the outskirts of Munich - if you think you absolutely need to live in Schwabing or Glockenbachviertel, it's your own damn fault.
[+] [-] dbasedow|11 years ago|reply
I also turned to crawling. I regularly crawled IS24's furnished apartment section and put new entries into a Google Fusion Table. That way I could filter on fields and see the apartments on a map at the same time. This wasn't automated as much as the original poster's solution. But my main requirement was that the apartment be near a subway station of a line that stops at my place of work, which is not that easy to automate.
After about a week I found an apartment that was rented out by the owner directly (none of that agent fee nonsense). I was the first to contact the guy - a few minutes after it was posted. I had to decide if I take it the same day. Based only on pictures... It was a good deal. Colleagues of mine were paying MUCH MORE and got MUCH LESS.
[+] [-] mironathetin|11 years ago|reply
We want to buy something in Munich and indeed, even if you are prepared to spend a million or more, it is extremely hard to get an invitation to visit a place (Even if you are in the right age and your wife is an italian girl, like mine).
It would be really cool to outwit the real estate dealers in the way you did it. I keep thinking. Ideas are welcome.
[+] [-] brazzy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] domrdy|11 years ago|reply
As far as I know this fee will soon have to be paid by the landlord rather than the potential tenant (by german law).
[+] [-] mironathetin|11 years ago|reply
Indeed, there is a law in preparation, that you pay, if you contacted the agent to find a flat, but the owner pays, if he asked the agent to find a tenant.
I tell you what will happen: you'll never get a contract to rent a place, unless you sign that the agent worked for you, not for the owner.
[+] [-] freyfogle|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lultimouomo|11 years ago|reply
Does anyone have first hand experience of that, or an explanation of why it is so?
[+] [-] pjc50|11 years ago|reply
It's an oil country. I'd not be surprised to find it's full of million-dollar apartments driving the average up. Maybe the low wage workers live beyond the city boundary, or in favelas that are excluded from the average.
http://www.architonic.com/ntsht/over-site-how-caracas-s-new-...
[+] [-] koyote|11 years ago|reply
Just look at the numbers for Paris vs Munich. Paris is higher in everything but is ranked one behind Munich.
[+] [-] mithras|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NicoJuicy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wxm|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lordbusiness|11 years ago|reply
The world is better off for having them.
[+] [-] erikb|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonalmeida|11 years ago|reply
I'd be curious to know where I stand..
[+] [-] qwerta|11 years ago|reply
Captcha is not really a problem if you are willing to spend a few cents.
[+] [-] Kurtz79|11 years ago|reply
Is living in 15 m² reasonable ?
I live in a studio of about 30 m² and I find it claustrophobic at times.