<story><title>Ask HN: Review RentPost.com</title><url>http://rentpost.com</url><text>After our team has spent the last 2 years in development, working countless hours, we have been able to FINALLY push out our service to the public!  We welcome your feedback and thoughts.  Cheers.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>DanBlake</author><text>I own with my father a 30 unit building. With that, let me just address the tagline: &quot;Connect with tenants effortlessly, automate rent with online rent collection, organize work orders, and much more!&quot;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;p&gt;Connect with tenants effortlessly - Not a good thing, Usually leads to excess work orders, more &quot;asks&quot; and petty squabbles about this and that.&lt;p&gt;-&lt;p&gt;Automate rent with online rent collection - Not sure how this is going to work. We have a option for people to pay rent via CC, but most people opt to do it in cash/check. Since only a fraction would use this, I would have to add to my work load to manually enter their transactions in here to have data integrity.&lt;p&gt;-&lt;p&gt;organize work orders- Definitely dont want this. If they need something done, they just go the manager and ask. Taking away that element will just create unneeded work orders. We already have a internal system for tracking needed work. I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things.&lt;p&gt;-&lt;p&gt;...tasks, contacts and more!
I guess this is cool, but we never really have a need for this. You already have to file their rental application and other work anyways, so its not like you wont have this.&lt;p&gt;-&lt;p&gt;I guess I just dont see the appeal. Its cool to have a nice online interface for this, but I know we wouldnt use it and even my friend who runs a 400 unit complex hates moving stuff to tech.  Unfortunately, they always add more work then they solve. The last thing ANY land lord needs, is /MORE/ paper trail :)&lt;p&gt;-&lt;p&gt;If you get anything from this, get this- I am a technical, HN user that owns a apartment building. I am (what you would assume) your absolute ideal customer.&lt;p&gt;And with that, I wouldnt use your product without significant changes.&lt;p&gt;~fin</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ryanwaggoner</author><text>I&apos;m not trying to attack you personally, but your response is typical of the real estate industry, and exactly why there&apos;s a hole in the market worth billions. For whatever reason, customer service is almost uniformly bad in the real estate industry. It&apos;s so bad, people don&apos;t even realize how bad it is, because they&apos;ve never had anything else to choose from. For example, this kind of attitude makes me really sad:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is the same kind of disdain-for-customers attitude that leads web developers to build paid services that are really hard to cancel.&lt;p&gt;The marketing and branding in real estate are also a joke, but it&apos;s the customer service thing that really gets me. There&apos;s a huge opportunity here for someone to do it right.&lt;p&gt;Disclosure: I&apos;m an active real estate investor with three small properties.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Review RentPost.com</title><url>http://rentpost.com</url><text>After our team has spent the last 2 years in development, working countless hours, we have been able to FINALLY push out our service to the public!  We welcome your feedback and thoughts.  Cheers.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>DanBlake</author><text>I own with my father a 30 unit building. With that, let me just address the tagline: &quot;Connect with tenants effortlessly, automate rent with online rent collection, organize work orders, and much more!&quot;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;p&gt;Connect with tenants effortlessly - Not a good thing, Usually leads to excess work orders, more &quot;asks&quot; and petty squabbles about this and that.&lt;p&gt;-&lt;p&gt;Automate rent with online rent collection - Not sure how this is going to work. We have a option for people to pay rent via CC, but most people opt to do it in cash/check. Since only a fraction would use this, I would have to add to my work load to manually enter their transactions in here to have data integrity.&lt;p&gt;-&lt;p&gt;organize work orders- Definitely dont want this. If they need something done, they just go the manager and ask. Taking away that element will just create unneeded work orders. We already have a internal system for tracking needed work. I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things.&lt;p&gt;-&lt;p&gt;...tasks, contacts and more!
I guess this is cool, but we never really have a need for this. You already have to file their rental application and other work anyways, so its not like you wont have this.&lt;p&gt;-&lt;p&gt;I guess I just dont see the appeal. Its cool to have a nice online interface for this, but I know we wouldnt use it and even my friend who runs a 400 unit complex hates moving stuff to tech.  Unfortunately, they always add more work then they solve. The last thing ANY land lord needs, is /MORE/ paper trail :)&lt;p&gt;-&lt;p&gt;If you get anything from this, get this- I am a technical, HN user that owns a apartment building. I am (what you would assume) your absolute ideal customer.&lt;p&gt;And with that, I wouldnt use your product without significant changes.&lt;p&gt;~fin</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jacquesm</author><text>That&apos;s as good an advertisement for &apos;iterate&apos; early and often as we&apos;ll see around here. Two years of development and that&apos;s the first response you give, I guess either you&apos;re not the target market or maybe they should have connected with actual users a bit earlier.&lt;p&gt;So this makes me wonder, was this product developed on the &apos;they will come&apos; methodology or was there actual end-user involvement and piloting with early adopters during the development phase?&lt;p&gt;If the latter then you&apos;re simply not the target market.&lt;p&gt;Where I live if you have a property that is &apos;to let&apos; you contract out the handling of all the details to an agency that manages a large number of properties and you just pocket the cash every month.</text></comment>