Rental at 111 West 16th Street

Uhhh...

They are all rented here. First showing was Thursday night at 6PM. Email came from owner all three rented. I have rented units here and can say from experience, first showing, be there, with paperwork. It's a feeding frenzy!

Craigslist was lit up with this listing all week. Funny to see how many brokers posted new CL listings today to try the "innocent" bait and switch.

wtf is this?

I thought it was me. I thought I was missing someting, and I say no.

I also say, it is spelled "something". There.

Found this on the internet regarding Bait and Switch:

In the real estate business particularly with rentals a well-known fact is that when someone calls on an ad for an apartment chances are they will most likely not rent it because it does not fit their needs or it has already been taken.

A good broker will design a strategy around this fact by collecting a portfolio of ten comparable apartments similar in budget and features and place ten ads on craigslist. When the customer calls for an appointment there will be nine other apartments to view in case the client does not like the apartment or the apartment has been already taken. The objective of the lead generator is to have the customer call the agent and if the agent is worth their salt they will be able to make them their client.

Now here’s the gray area. Sometimes customers call for an apartment which was available but is told it has just been taken off the market and then agrees to look at some other apartments. But the customer has no idea whether the original apartment existed in the first place.

An apartment that is priced correctly will often go quickly the very day an ad is put out. That is the nature of the business. One also has to keep in mind the chaotic nature of the application process and the cryptic lines of communication between broker and landlord

NYCREAgent
about 2 hours ago
ignore this person
report abuse Found this on the internet regarding Bait and Switch:

In the real estate business particularly with rentals a well-known fact is that when someone calls on an ad for an apartment chances are they will most likely not rent it because it does not fit their needs or it has already been taken.

A good broker will design a strategy around this fact by collecting a portfolio of ten comparable apartments similar in budget and features and place ten ads on craigslist. When the customer calls for an appointment there will be nine other apartments to view in case the client does not like the apartment or the apartment has been already taken. The objective of the lead generator is to have the customer call the agent and if the agent is worth their salt they will be able to make them their client.

Now here’s the gray area. Sometimes customers call for an apartment which was available but is told it has just been taken off the market and then agrees to look at some other apartments. But the customer has no idea whether the original apartment existed in the first place.

An apartment that is priced correctly will often go quickly the very day an ad is put out. That is the nature of the business. One also has to keep in mind the chaotic nature of the application process and the cryptic lines of communication between broker and landlord

So says a weak agent who has to pursue potential tenants as he has no real relationships that matter ie, those whith property owners. i know exactly what is available in my buildings at all times. why? i'm the only person who can write a lease on any of the properties i am advertising. do i rush to take the ads down for rented properties? no. because idiot renters will sometimes start their search months in advance, so why not keep them on file in the event something comes up and can be taken off the market before ever hitting the market? easy 15% fee, no downtime for owner, etc, et al.

wtf is this thread. it's like being on terrible drugs.

Brokers talk... this is why I hate dealing with them. DIY works so much better for most renters.

I'm not a broker. To clarify, this thread is talking about a particular owner listed apartment that even the owner himself posted on craigslist, but due to its being very low price for the area every low-rent (pun intended) broker has posted fake pictures of the supposed apartment on craigslist with fee-based ads, either as lead generators or to try to take a "collect your own fee" approach to the no-fee apartment. There was then a single 30 minute open house of the occupied apartment during which the owner and all said brokers took applications, probably with the brokers pocketing application fees all around. Days following this, various brokers still posted new ads on craigslist proclaiming it an available apartment, perhaps to generate leads and/or collect "application fees".

This all said, what is to stop a broker from collecting 20 $100 applications for a severely underpriced apartment, thus making a cool 2 grand on top of the fee collected from the eventual taker?

No, pier45. That isn't what this is about. The whole thread is phony--maybe you set it up not realizing how this forum works--you don't advertise rental units on here. The first and third posters on this thread have never posted anything on Streeteasy before so far as I know. The first post is utter jibberish. The third post, pretending to respond to the first, is more jibberish. Since no one lists rental units on this forum, the idea that the third poster would respond to the first as if it were completely normal reveals this whole thread is a phony. It is as if the person who posted them (I think it was the same person), didn't understand what this forum is. Then you chime in with more jibberish. You claim the posts "lit up" craigslist: wtf are you talking about? You recognize the jibberish of these posts from craigslist? wtf does "lit up" craigslist even mean? Are all the same person, trying to ineffectually make some point rather than just being straight forward and starting a discussion about a topic. NYCREAgent is as nuts as this whole thread is, too. It's the looney bin of Streeteasy threads, if you ask me, and THAT is saying A LOT.

Lit up is referred to having hundreds of broker posts, across several (mis-)classifications, advertising this one unit. If you are looking for an apartment on craigslist including in price range you will quickly see 90% of ads are for the same 3 or so units at a time. This was an extreme case.

Nothing is strange about the first three e-mails aside from some idiot who thought they could write to a property via message board. I can't imagine the first post is phony because the owner already has people beating down its door so it has no need to post it, and a broker will not make a phony post with a link to an owner no-fee listing. As for post #3, maybe sometimes brokers are just friendly and want to help.

>It's the looney bin of Streeteasy threads, if you ask me, and THAT is saying A LOT.

Amen

as always KW, clarity, tnx.

That is exactly true pier45. While I may have multiple personalities, all of them are friendly. Not every loonie in the SE loonie bin is a vile troll just looking to start threadwars!

Ok, let me explain to those of you who believe you know how things work.

If you choose to go directly to the owner, you don't have to pay a fee. If you see the same apartment through utilizing an agents services, you do have to pay a fee. The owner of 111 West 16th DOES NOT PAY THE BROKERS FEE BECAUSE HE/SHE SHOWED UP WITH YOU BY THEIR SIDE!

You know NYCREAgent, everybody is an expert in RE these days because of the internet. ;-)

thehometeam
about 5 hours ago
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report abuse You know NYCREAgent, everybody is an expert in RE these days because of the internet. ;-)

the sad thing is that you actually believe that.