<story><title>We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments</title><url>https://caretaker.com/blog/we-replaced-rental-brokers-with-software-and-filled-200-vacant-apartments</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>e1g</author><text>The landlord is under no obligation to accept anyone this service finds, so this startup guarantees an outcome they cannot control. It might be a way to build awareness and goodwill, but they are burning VC capital to offer a service that is either fundamentally unsustainable or mispriced.</text></item><item><author>benmanns</author><text>We used this pre-COVID to get out of a Brooklyn lease and had a fantastic experience (back when it was Flip Instant). Flip basically charged 1 month rent and guaranteed a fill or they&amp;#x27;d pay the rest (6 months) of my lease. Compared to our landlord who wanted 1.75x rent, up to 2.75x rent if not filled immediately, after significant negotiation. Hiring a broker myself would have likely cost 1x rent or more anyways with all the risk on us.&lt;p&gt;I really like the service provider + financial underwriting combination, where you get basically an SLA for them providing a  service, where they take 100% of the risk after the fee.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>matsemann</author><text>Aren&amp;#x27;t people obliged to minimize their own and the other part&amp;#x27;s loss in contracts in the US?&lt;p&gt;In my country, me moving out and saying I won&amp;#x27;t continue to pay, while the contract end date is still far in the future would of course be a breach of the contract. But that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean the landlord then can let the house sit empty for the rest of the contract time and force me to cover their loss. Landlord would instead have to try and minimize their losses by finding a new tenant, and what I would owe the landlord would be their costs to do so and the time the apartment stood empty.&lt;p&gt;Edit: &amp;quot;mitigation of damage&amp;quot; might be the US term for it. From Cornell: &lt;i&gt;The mitigation of damages doctrine, also known as the doctrine of avoidable consequences, prevents an injured party from recovering damages that could have been avoided through reasonable efforts. The duty to mitigate damages is most traditionally employed in the areas of tort and contract law.&lt;/i&gt; To me that reads like if you want to void the contract, and the landlord doesn&amp;#x27;t accept a reasonable tenant to take over, the landlord might have to carry their losses themselves. My guess (given laws about renting being very in favor of tenants) is that there most places even might be explicit laws allowing the tenant to do this.</text></comment>
<story><title>We replaced rental brokers with software and filled 200 vacant apartments</title><url>https://caretaker.com/blog/we-replaced-rental-brokers-with-software-and-filled-200-vacant-apartments</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>e1g</author><text>The landlord is under no obligation to accept anyone this service finds, so this startup guarantees an outcome they cannot control. It might be a way to build awareness and goodwill, but they are burning VC capital to offer a service that is either fundamentally unsustainable or mispriced.</text></item><item><author>benmanns</author><text>We used this pre-COVID to get out of a Brooklyn lease and had a fantastic experience (back when it was Flip Instant). Flip basically charged 1 month rent and guaranteed a fill or they&amp;#x27;d pay the rest (6 months) of my lease. Compared to our landlord who wanted 1.75x rent, up to 2.75x rent if not filled immediately, after significant negotiation. Hiring a broker myself would have likely cost 1x rent or more anyways with all the risk on us.&lt;p&gt;I really like the service provider + financial underwriting combination, where you get basically an SLA for them providing a  service, where they take 100% of the risk after the fee.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crazygringo</author><text>Obviously you&amp;#x27;re not going to use it if your landlord doesn&amp;#x27;t allow subleases, and landlords are also usually pretty upfront about approval requirements for a sublease.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve never heard of a landlord not allowing a subletter to convert to a full lease upon original lease expiration.&lt;p&gt;I mean, the alternative is to forego a month or two of rent while you find a new tenant. Unless there&amp;#x27;s a horrible problem with the existing subletter&amp;#x27;s credit, but then they probably wouldn&amp;#x27;t have gotten the sublease in the first place.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not saying it&amp;#x27;s never happened, but it&amp;#x27;s going to be rare. I don&amp;#x27;t really see anything unsustainable or mispriced about this at all. There are already other companies doing it as well in NYC, e.g.:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;doorkee.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;doorkee.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>