Sunday, February 15, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Looking for Real Apartments? You Found the Right Place!
Well, you're almost in the right place.
This is the site which explains why you should start—and most likely end—your Boston Metro Region Apartment web search at On-MarketBoston. If you're the kind of person who'll just take our word for it, don't waste another second! Scat! Shoo!
Still here? Thought so. If you were the kind of person who was satisfied with any old kinda apartment listing, you'd be at Boston Apartments or Craigslist. Because they have TONS AND TONS AND TONS MORE LISTINGS THAN ONMARKETBOSTON, AND MORE IS ALWAYS BETTER! So, Go! Git! We suck. Go look at MORE!
Your'e still here? Good. Now we'll tell you that those other sites don't have any more on-market properties, than OnMarketBoston. They just have more listings. And more importantly, our ratio, of signal to noise is much much much much better.
A huge hunk of Boston's rental market is owned by Building management companies with dozens or hundreds and hundreds of units. These listings might be shared amongst a dozen agencies. Time to do the math.
Let's say there's 50 empty units in at ten management companies. Each works with 10 agencies, with ten brokers each. Quick, how many listings show up in Craigslist each and every day for those 50 apartments?
We'll wait.
Fifty times 10 times 10. 50 units have become 5000 listings! But that's not all! No, on Craigslist, you know how people respond, to their listing being buried in a pile of listings? They post more listings!
CL posts persist for seven days. So in a week, those fifty units could generate 35,000 listings.
Now, CL isn't that bad, yet. There are plenty of lazy agents out there. Most agents quit after a few months, when they realize how hard it is to put people in units and collect a commission. It is far from easy money.
We have seen this disaster coming for about two or three years now, and we've built a solution. We do all the data entry ourselves, and we only allow listings that include valid postal addresses and landlord contact info. (We manage the overlap between agencies by randomly doling out hits between the different agencies who share that listing.)
When you search for those 50 properties at OMB, you know what you get? Fifty hits. Not fifty thousand hits.
So you see, more isn't always better. Not when more is fake.
We know this was a lot to digest. But now that you have gotten through it, could you please throw us a link? Click the add this thingy below here, and Facebook us. Yelp us. Digg us. You can even Fark us if you want, we don't mind. Help us get the word out.
We have to use the human internet to defeat the spammers, to defeat the bots. It's kind of like the movie The Matrix, only, well, much less cool. And much more real.
PS: we're still in beta. The site might wink out for a minute or two now and then and we have to jiggle the handle. We're working on it. Keep thinking, do I want to search through 35, 000 listings to find 50 apartments? And bear with us.
This is the site which explains why you should start—and most likely end—your Boston Metro Region Apartment web search at On-MarketBoston. If you're the kind of person who'll just take our word for it, don't waste another second! Scat! Shoo!
Still here? Thought so. If you were the kind of person who was satisfied with any old kinda apartment listing, you'd be at Boston Apartments or Craigslist. Because they have TONS AND TONS AND TONS MORE LISTINGS THAN ONMARKETBOSTON, AND MORE IS ALWAYS BETTER! So, Go! Git! We suck. Go look at MORE!
Your'e still here? Good. Now we'll tell you that those other sites don't have any more on-market properties, than OnMarketBoston. They just have more listings. And more importantly, our ratio, of signal to noise is much much much much better.
Tedious Explanation; if the graphic above makes sense just go to OMB now!
A huge hunk of Boston's rental market is owned by Building management companies with dozens or hundreds and hundreds of units. These listings might be shared amongst a dozen agencies. Time to do the math.
Let's say there's 50 empty units in at ten management companies. Each works with 10 agencies, with ten brokers each. Quick, how many listings show up in Craigslist each and every day for those 50 apartments?
We'll wait.
Fifty times 10 times 10. 50 units have become 5000 listings! But that's not all! No, on Craigslist, you know how people respond, to their listing being buried in a pile of listings? They post more listings!
CL posts persist for seven days. So in a week, those fifty units could generate 35,000 listings.
Now, CL isn't that bad, yet. There are plenty of lazy agents out there. Most agents quit after a few months, when they realize how hard it is to put people in units and collect a commission. It is far from easy money.
Even More Details You Probably Don't Care About But Which We Include in the Spirit of Transparency
We have seen this disaster coming for about two or three years now, and we've built a solution. We do all the data entry ourselves, and we only allow listings that include valid postal addresses and landlord contact info. (We manage the overlap between agencies by randomly doling out hits between the different agencies who share that listing.)
When you search for those 50 properties at OMB, you know what you get? Fifty hits. Not fifty thousand hits.
So you see, more isn't always better. Not when more is fake.
Now Go, but before you leave could you please...
We know this was a lot to digest. But now that you have gotten through it, could you please throw us a link? Click the add this thingy below here, and Facebook us. Yelp us. Digg us. You can even Fark us if you want, we don't mind. Help us get the word out.
We have to use the human internet to defeat the spammers, to defeat the bots. It's kind of like the movie The Matrix, only, well, much less cool. And much more real.
PS: we're still in beta. The site might wink out for a minute or two now and then and we have to jiggle the handle. We're working on it. Keep thinking, do I want to search through 35, 000 listings to find 50 apartments? And bear with us.
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