Is all tech entrepreneurship based on creating a middleman where none is needed? Just call it "disrupting" and laugh all the way to the bank...

This is the most appalling part..

>"What was even more surprising was that the apartment was much cheaper" without June Homes involved, Choi said. Renting through the landlord directly was almost $600 less.

So true, Just like the NYC Taxi Medallion owners who had there lives turned upside down by Uber and Lyft while the city looked the other way..

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Why do you think Uber took away business from the Taxi Medallion owners?

Because they offered a premium service at the same price as a cab. Contactless, no hailing, less scamming. The works.

The only issue is that the “same price” was just venture capital funded losses. It actually costs much more to operate a ride sharing app business model. A recent test in NYC showed cabs are now anywhere from 35-83% cheaper. The airport run differences are even bigger.

So now we have many fewer taxis and Uber / Lyft priced as the luxury services that they actually are.

What does this mean for middle income users? Back to the subway unless and until taxis get back on the roads.

Transit is better than using a private car anyways, so call it a net benefit.

Middleman tech "entrepreneurs" need to get their cut to subsidize their lifestyles, and VCs need some sort of justification for burning their investments.

Every story about these operations list eye-popping rents. I don’t get it. And the articles always talk about this as their only option. Is no one moving in to an apartment as a roommate without being on the lease these days?

Nyc as a luxury product is never a good thing. If you don’t want cars in spaces, ban them.

I don't think outright banning of cars is the right policy decision. There are occasions when it is necessary or makes sense. I do, however, think that's steps like congestion pricing and eliminating subsidized parking are appropriate insofar as they force car users to bear the cost of their choice.

I would like to not get roasted on this, but my experience in this sub tells me I am about to. Full disclosure - I am a real estate agent, and really like helping people find homes. I've brushed up against June Homes a few times, and haven't had any issues yet.

I don't get what June Homes promised that they didn't deliver?

They aren't a company designed for long term housing. They are a company designed to solve some niche problems. Landlords rarely offer sub-1 year leases. And they frequently want 35xrent income or 80xrent guarantors.

What exactly are you supposed to do as a foreign exchange student? Military? Travelling nurse? Corporate traveler when you need to have a place to live in NYC sight-unseen now? You're gonna pay more, and have more hassle in an already expensive and hassle-rich environment.

The article just reads like, "Help! I signed a contract I didn't read and now people expect me to honor what I agreed to!"

I don't think anyone going to June Homes website is walking away thinking this is the best way to have permanent housing in NYC, but all the complaints just seem like them doing business as normal.

Not for every destination. Plenty of places I go it’s very hard to get there with mass transit

General statements should be construed generally.

They say it at the top, this is a solution for international students/recent immigrants with no credit score that do not qualify for traditional apartments.

They were able to rent directly after a year because they had paperwork in the US.

The real solution needed here is an improved way of measuring credit

Right, but you don’t need credit to move in to an apartment as a roommate. That’s why I find acting like there’s no other solution weird.

No.

But many are—especially the ones that are directly public facing.

They’re basically just trying to add a technology dimensions to things that already exist, and convince investors and customers that it isnt just incremental improvement, but a qualitative leap.

You need a roommate who’s willing to sign for you and bear the credit risk, difficult if you have no friends in a foreign country or just moved with awful credit.

I don’t know about you, but the streets are FULL of yellow cabs. Literally wall to wall yellow cabs. Maybe in the outer boroughs, I don’t know. But in manhattan, there is no shortage of yellow cabs…

Interesting. I live in Manhattan and can go 5 minutes on a major thoroughfare and see zero. The number of cabs on the road is 50% or less than pre pandemic levels, and many seem to just congregate at all times at the airports and midtown

Landlords are already a middleman who is unneeded lmao, this shit is a nightmare

The market decides if it's needed.

tell that to the NYC Taxi medallion owner's who paid nearly $1,000,000 for the exclusive right to drive a taxi in NYC and were then undercut by Uber and Lyft. I think I remember at least a couple of dozen NYC Taxi medallion owners who have committed suicide because they could not make payments or support themselves or their families anymore since 2016.

In essence they paid $1,000,000 for a right that Uber and Lyft drivers got for practically free.

How would that make you feel?

Happy to do so. People make bad business investments every day. It's a shame that some folks overextended themselves so badly, but we shouldn't make bad public policy choices because they did.

I live in midtown. I don’t know about harlem or alphabet city.

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How are owners unnecessary middlemen?

If you can buy, no one is stopping you.

No. I have the lease and rented to people who had an agreement with me. That's what roommates used to mean.

Maybe a little more context would help you understand my point.

Simply saying it was a "bad business decision doesn't cut it.

There was an implied contract between The City of NY and the Owners of NYC Taxi medallions. Before Uber and Lyft came along it was illegal to take a paying passenger fare without a NYC Medallion and a approved vehicle.

So in essence the were drivers were secure in knowing that the City Medallions issued by the TLC were regulated and their investment was secure.

That is until they were lobbied by Lyft and Uber to allow them to completely barge in and "disrupt" the implied agreement the medallion owners had payed for and counted on to make a living.

> owners had paid for and

FTFY.

Although payed exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:

• Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. The deck is yet to be payed.

• Payed out when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. The rope is payed out! You can pull now.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.

Beep, boop, I'm a bot

OOOf, bad take.

None where I am in queens and there never were.

Regulatory risk is part of analyzing a business decision. It's not uncommon for investments to turn south because of a regulatory shift. It happens.

It's not.

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We just can’t give credit to every immigrant that comes over. That’s basically free money for terrorist financing. Have to have some rules. It’s complicated.

This app middleman is a bubble that I hope bursts and crashes harder than the dot com bubble. I don’t see AirBnB or Uber going anywhere but we have far too many middleman apps that bring questionable value to the table.

Or a guarantor that can check credit internationally

They’re not giving credit, they’re just checking credit scores. That being said you can’t give a credit score without a credit history. I think there is a niche to be explored in translating foreign credit scores for a fee.

Compared to medallion taxis, Uber is libertarian capitalism in its purest form. Make of that what you guys will.

When that happens (regulatory shift), they tend to lobby the shit out of it to maintain the status quo.

Possible meaning: they will bid higher on a property because they have a higher purchasing power.

Alternative: corporate owner contracts a management company, management company takes a significant cut of the rent

Yeah, let them crash and burn!!! Run that capital dry, baby!

So often their market is not the end user, it’s the company that will buy them out.

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Uber ain’t much cheaper nowadays

…except for all the landlords who buy everything out and rent them out for exuberant prices

At least Ubers pick up black people.

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Who would act occupied any time he saw a black person looking for a ride?

And made sure he took a couple of extra turns when he got tourists?

And would "accidentally" turn the meter on during a flat fare ride?

And cleaned his car once a month if that?

And would refuse to take people to three outer boroughs?

Now, maybe your uncle was the one decent cabbie in the city. Maybe he really was an honest, great dude. But that doesn't change the fact that before Uber, taking a cab fucking sucked, because the entire industry was a racket with zero accountability and no fucks to give.

That’s not credit. It’s not free money. Who’s giving anyone free money?

every industry is corrupt. even religion is corrupt. Society makes that possible when people (like you) fail to see the point. That point being that the city allowed itself to betray a contract with the drivers who it had sold it's medallions to by failing to properly regulate them to their benefit and finally allow idiot tech bro's lobby them to look the other way while they turned their backs completely on them. this isn't case, it merely serves as an example of a systemic problem of elected politicians not standing up for the people's interests they are supposed to represent.

As someone who used June homes:

1. I used them because I knew I would be leaving the city in less than a year and I knew about when I was leaving, so I needed a shortened lease (6-7 months). June was great for that.

2. They covered utilities and they were a step behind in terms of pricing apartments. Like when I signed up they charged me 100 total for utilities (electric, water) when they def were taking a loss. They changed that as I was moving out.

3. They give you SO MANY FREE TOILETRIES AND PAPER TOWELS. Legit they would drop off large boxes full of it until we told them we had enough. I’m still using paper towels I took when I moved out.

4. Overall they were kind and accommodating. I would NOT use them if I was signing a year long lease. But if you need a place for like 10 months or something weird then it is totally cool. A lot of the places are empty so I had no Roomate for a month.

5. Bungalow, a company that is like June, blows ass and don’t use them.

edit: people in the comments are thinking this is some psy opp lol I’ve used both services and explain why below. If you want to use bungalow then go ahead, im telling you it is worse. Plus, why would I say not to use june for year long leases? That’s a big part of their model.

And credit cards! Amazingly every medallion cab in nyc seems to have a dysfunctional credit card machine when you get to your destination

If your problem with the housing market is, "someone else will pay more than me", it is with supply and demand, not specifically owners.

I sorta agree with you. NYC fails at its affordable housing mandate. Still not buyer's fault.

“Even religion is corrupt.” Really going out on a limb there…..

This. When I moved to the US it was all shitty options. Regardless of salary you didn’t have the option to get your own place (unless you paid something like 6 months upfront or used one of those eye-wateringly expensive guarantor options), so it was roommates. And Craigslist is a damn weird place to be meeting people. I looked at many of these types of places before getting lucky with a roommate but they all had sketchy reviews and were expensive.

Hopefully Facebook groups have made this a whole lot easier and these quasi tech solutions can die.

The niche is services like paid for guarantors. Works already in most of the nice buildings but it costs a fortune.

Sorry about your medallion

I did this too. I needed 3.5 months in a furnished unit and this was the easiest option. I had two 'roommates' in similar situations who came and went during that time too.

Probably still wouldn’t drive to the Bronx.

Exactly

Don’t they have those green cabs around there? The ones u have to call for.

>They say it at the top, this is a solution for international students/recent immigrants with no credit score that do not qualify for traditional apartments.

And who have enough of a financial cushion from their rich parents to take risks on obviously slimy PropTech apps

The problem is that Uber replaced all these problems with their own equally racist drivers, exploitative pricing and Wal-Mart-but-not profitable business model

Because they operated at a loss while staying afloat on VC money for years. Same thing Wal-Mart did to small retail in every American town, except with investor money instead of economies of scale

"Paper is better than rock."

"Unless you're up against scissors"

"Hey! How dare you construe my general statement like that!"

More like:

"Paper is better than rock"

"There is a mystical rock known to the ancients that is greater than any paper"

"...ok"

This comment has big "three underpaid June interns in a trenchcoat" energy.

June Homes is great, despite this article demonstrating that they are not! Don't patronize our their competitors! Good day!

“Waaaa our legally enforced monopoly got disrupted and we actually had to improve our product and compete for our customer’s business.”

Only a complete bozo would construe this as a bad thing.

You’re not answering the question.

The answer is that they were cheaper. So of course consumers chose Uber.

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Yeah I’ve had tons of international roommates who weren’t on the lease over the years but landlords have gotten more strict about everyone being on the lease and those international roommates were always pretty grateful that I trusted them. That indicated to me that they’d had a hard time finding a place.

Some of the best roommates though because they feel lucky just to have found a place. And they never have lots of stuff or pets, lol.

Lol Ive used both because my MS program was 1.5 years so I signed a 1 year lease normally and then signed a lease until the end of my program and then another until I moved out. The first partial lease I signed was with bungalow and they had a maid which was nice, but they straight up illegally boarded off a kitchen wall to make a new room so I had to call 311. Plus they didn’t give free toiletries and the utilities at the time were not included.

The june place was just nicer and cleaner. I def don’t work in real estate lol

I have fond memories hunting for a place via the Village Voice. Those were the days!

Yes.

You can still pick up the telephone.

They make money by making the process easier, and charging you a premium. (Or using your eyeballs for advertising).

But - believe it or not - no one is doing this for free.

If you aren't paying, you are the product.

I used June Homes once because I needed a place to stay in the city for only a month. It was mostly fine, though really expensive. The roommate thing kinda sucked, not because they were awful but because they all mutually ignored each other. And it makes sense why they did that but it was not a great environment for me.

So in my opinion, June Homes and similar companies are fine if you're looking for under a year lease options (or if for some, you have money to spend and want to keep switching apartments through different NYC areas). But if you're looking for anything 1+ year lease, don't bother.

Landlords got more strict because they can charge more for the apartment.

That's all.

Also, this is very neighborhood to neighborhood. My landlord doesn't because she doesn't want to deal with roommates individually. Small landlords often don't want to.

Occasionally. I really haven't seen one since 2019.

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No. Owners got tired of getting "half rent" when roommate-not-on-the-lease stopped paying.

There is no recourse on that. The person on the lease should pay, but can't, so the only recourse is to not get paid or eviction - a multi-year process in NYC.

Had multiple landlords who kept my rent low, because I paid on time and told them if I ever couldn't.

I hadn't considered it as a competitor's takedown piece. Interesting.

Agreed

>No. Owners got tired of getting "half rent" when roommate-not-on-the-lease stopped paying.

There is no such legal thing as half rent. My lease is for the total rent and I'm on the hook for it. Legally, a landlord can continue to seek past due rent after I'm out.

And getting an eviction will prevent you from renting elsewhere. It shows on credit ratings, so it can even impact on getting hired for a job.

I don't know who sold you the line of shit about half rent, but it's a line of shit.

Can you describe the eviction process in New York City? I can.

Edit: From the post you responded to, but forgot to quote:

"The person on the lease should pay, but can't, so the only recourse is to not get paid or eviction - a multi-year process in NYC."

Edit: I love when asshats want to get the last word so they comment then block me.

You're not the only one who has lived in this city for 20+ years. But my name is right there. Where is yours?

I have rented here for 20 years.

When I arrived, a single leaseholder for a shared apartment was normal and had been for decades. With the same rules on eviction. It worked because the LL didn't want an eviction and neither did the tenant. A whole apartment could be placed quickly and did/does, when you aren't charging 4500/month.

Someone sold you a bill of goods or you're lying about being a renter.

Small landlords aren't doing this because they'd have to pay someone to act as a leasing agent for each room. This is time consuming and expensive to find many people for one apartment. To take on the additional responsibility of managing the interrelationships within an apartment? A tenant with a lease has obvious rights and they can exercise those even more so when they live with the person. It's only become popular as building have been bought up by hedge funds and have property management companies to handle this.

Please stop with your "think of the poor hedgefunds argument." The only thing multiple leases did was drive up the rents in various popular neighborhoods.

I would be interested to know why Choi’s landlord ended its relationship with June Homes. The landlord continued to rent the apartment to the same tenants for less money, according to this article, but the landlord could potentially be collecting more money. What laws regulate building management in NYC? What type of business is June Homes? Did it undertake actual building management?

Yep not surprised. June Homes, Common Living, Bungalow, and etc do the same crap. They operate on the grey area of the law similar to Uber and Lyft to make money.

There's nothing proprietary that they have and they are not tech companies. They are just property management companies in disguise.

And this is one of the caveats of the poorly written Tenant Protection Act of 2019.

International folks or those with bad credit used to be able to prepay rent or offer a larger security deposit. That is now illegal, which is why June Homes and all these other predatory companies are thriving.

Because "easy" doesn't mean "better"?

My take: it’s overpriced compared to the market and it’s a roll of the dice if you get decent or shitty roommates but the regular housing market is incredibly dehumanizing and unethical and fucked too

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