[jean-malo]

In highly competitive markets the good apartments don't even make it to the websites that aggregate listings before someone takes them.

The ones that do are either very expensive or will have 20+ people showing up the next day (sometimes the same day) for a visit. It's crazy and while this article is very neat I'm not sure a bot that scrapes listing in batch is the answer.

[switch007]

We only got ours because we were very nice to the agent after losing out on an apartment (thanked her, asked her to keep us in mind if anything else comes up etc).

A week later she phoned us before she listed a new one, and we went to see it 3 hours later and took it.

It goes to show the human aspect still matters, a lot. That one email thanking her was probably worth way way more than eg hours spent on a bot to automate applications.

Many apartments also don’t even make it to an agent because people have friends they promise it to and refer them to the landlord.

[foobarian]

A long time ago I knew someone who's parents found them an excellent apartment at a great price in Boston. Great neighborhood, 2BR, nicely kept, off-street parking, you name it. Few years later they had to move since the owner was selling the place, and went on an apartment search by themselves (using an agency). Could not find anything anywhere near nice at that price point, and settled on something a lot more expensive.

I decided that their parents must have tipped/bribed the original agent to get at that listing (since none of these ever made it to any search site, not that there were many at that time).

[judge2020]

I don’t know the story of course, but apartments are one of the largest profit growth centers for capital firms; most metros have experienced >50% rent growth in the past decade[0], for instance. Chances are a renter will never see a rent decrease unless they downgrade in a key area (specs, amenities, location) or are moving in very short intervals.

0: https://www.self.inc/blog/cities-biggest-increase-rental-pri...