[probably_wrong]

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.

[davidroetzel]

Do not get me wrong, I do not disagree with his findings. That is probably very accurate and that is awful.

But originally he was not out to mine this data. He actually needed a place to live, and I wanted to point out that he might have approached this the wrong way.

Personally I prefer e-mail over phone calls. A lot. So this was not obvious to me up until my experience last year.