[baybal2]

>I have a hard time seeing how tech can help the RE industry. For starters, RE bubbles have led to the worst economic downturns

If that can amount to help, maybe burning it to the ground will do it?

Google Ziroom and what it did to rental market in China.

Were something similar to appear and get hold USA, expect American RE companies in big cities to burn down within a year.

But I doubt this prospect, I bet rich RE boys will spare no money lobbying to nuke it like they did with Airbnb.

[tim333]

I googled Ziroom and see they long lease apartments and then sublet, and their doing so has raised the cost of long leases in places. How is this burning anything to the ground? I'm confused.

[baybal2]

Just take a look on a very impressive list of RE companies they took over.

Besides of them doing all kinds of leasing models, they put a very thick slab of butter on top with add on services, something nobody else can match.

With a single click you can: get a handyman to fix anything, order renovations, moving, breakfast delivery, daycare, cleaning, maids, buy furniture, order a restyling, get new appliances, remote lock it, pay for every service, or even Airbnb it on your behalf if you leave for extended amount of time, or do that in reverse while you are on a trip to another city.

Effectively they sell life in high end serviced apartments for just a bit more than price of regular rental.

They mainly aim at a rich millennial demographics, bit with few tweaks, you can imagine them making up something for US market

[ghaff]

I suspect a lot has to do with labor costs. I could theoretically hire a full-time assistant who could take care of lots of tasks for me either directly or by contracting it out. But, for most individuals in the US or Western Europe, doing so would be cost prohibitive.

Aggregating and streamlining these services do help. In dense enough areas, some people who couldn't have afforded a personal driver use Uber. But relatively few people have the luxury of contracting out all their day-to-day routines.

[dnomad]

Pretty much this. Ziroom is pretty much the future of real estate.

Real estate will be virtualized like every other illiquid asset. This means:

* Ownership of real-estate gets rolled up into REITs. REITs are experts at building, buying and selling real-estate and they can do it at scale. "Home ownership" where small-time retail investors buy and sell real-estate will get selected away as its a grossly inefficient model.

* Real-estate property managers like Ziroom and WeWork and AirBNB will take out leases and resell highly customized and liquid packages. They provide not just access to the property but to a wide range of services and auxiliary services.

* The PMs now manage their inventory and pricing in real-time.

At this point you can start to think of real estate as any other "cloud service": acquired on demand, at fluctuating prices, and accessible through a whole clearly defined service/API layer.

We're starting to see this in China and SEA already in a big way [1]. Here again Asia is way ahead of the curve. Real-estate "on demand" means companies and even families are basically moving between different properties every month based on prices and needs. Office desks can be rented for as little as 15 minutes.

The key obstacle here has always been renter quality and the various housing legal regimes. In Asia at least the government seems primed to step in and vouch for renter quality which which will likely evolve into something like a credit rating for renters. The legal questions are still totally up in the air but that's not stopping people for now. Companies like Ziroom have been known to get up to some shady antics like evicting people in the middle of the night or hiring policemen to intimidate people.

[1] https://chinaeconomicreview.com/why-chinese-millennials-are-...

[ghaff]

It takes a certain mindset on the part of the renter as well. You sort of have to have minimal physical stuff and be OK with moving into a largely standardized serviced apartment. In other words, the apartment is somewhere you drop your stuff and sleep in. It's not "your" place.

There are corporate apartments in the US but these are usually oriented toward people who have their own place but have to spend a lot of time at some different location for a period of time. I don't know the level of service such places typically have.

[null000]

It strikes me as a little disturbing that there's yet another company trying to move it's customers as far away from "owning" things as possible.

[stephengillie]

> get a handyman to fix anything, order renovations, moving, breakfast delivery, daycare, cleaning, maids, buy furniture, order a restyling, get new appliances, remote lock it, pay for every service, or even Airbnb it on your behalf if you leave for extended amount of time, or do that in reverse while you are on a trip to another city.

So... apartment concierge. Americans already have most of those services, provided by another app. The value added here is the patented one-click single point of failure.

Some of these - renovations, daycare, furniture, appliances - I would want more involvement than just tapping "buy" in an app.

[ghaff]

There are a fair number of things that many people are probably OK with giving some general parameters and approving a purchase and have someone else take care of all the logistical details.

The bigger issue is that I'm not really willing to pay someone what it costs to e.g. take my car in for state inspection, run my errands, etc. I do have some services for things like getting my lawn cut but it's harder/more expensive to get someone to handle unscheduled one-off things.

[acct1771]

Then you're perhaps not the target market.

People with that kind of money, if they're dissatisfied, they just roll the dice again.

[stephengillie]

Is that market large enough in America to hit a critical mass?

[ghaff]

Like most personal services, it's probably a niche. In a luxury, NYC apartment? Sure. As you note they exist. But most people see grocery delivery as a luxury. In fact, I suspect even lawn mowing and maid services are used by a relatively small proportion of the population. Much less having someone take your car to the shop or the various other myriad errands that are always piling up on my todo board.

[ianai]

I don’t think they’d have to worry. That business model clashes with the individualism I’ve experienced in the west. Their whole apartment option sounds viable though. They’d have some success here but they’d have to pick their markets well.

Certainly, let us not forget a rich RE boy lives in the White House right now.

[baybal2]

FYI Ziroom had whole apartment rentals for many years now

[baybal2]

They were a "bachelor dorm" company for just 1 year of their existence, and whole apartments along with "co-livings" are now their main business