If you live in these 35 cities I will pay your summer rent

Obsessedwski

Obsessedwski

Active member
I'm 100% serious.

Long story short, I recently joined a startup in Montreal called Flatbook (https://flatbook.co/). The quick pitch is that we pay your rent while you're gone for the summer, then transform the place to give travellers an awesome place to stay.

So if you live in any of the 35 cities I've mentioned below and your place fits what we're looking for, I will pay your summer rent. All you do is give us the keys when you leave, and we take care of everything else for you.

You can apply on the website, and for the promo-code put in: SKI-NS

The cities we're in this year are:

USA

Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, LA, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Providence, San Diego, Washington

CANADA

Calgary, Niagara Falls, Ottawa, Quebec City, Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria

EUROPE

Reykjavik, Amsterdam, Brussels, Edinburgh, London, Rome, Bologna, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Lyon, Paris, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Milan, Prague, Warsaw

Hit me up if you have any questions - we're also hiring in all those places too so let me know if you're interested!
 
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Yeaahhhhhhhhhhh no.
 
I can get behind this idea. I am not sure I would have done it myself in college but I think the idea is legit. I've never felt comfortable with the idea of Air BnB and whatnot. Don't want a stranger in my home.

The fact that you pack everything up and redecorate is interesting. Doesn't that erode your margins too much?
 
13342655:cool_name said:
So how do you make money
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you give them your place for the summer. they apparently spruce it up for travelers who are looking for a place to stay in those cities. then they charge huge amounts of money for those said travelers to live there while you're gone.

i think its a good idea and kind of dumb at the same time. on one hand you are formalizing the subletting process through a middle man. on the other hand you are putting in a middle man, so they are going to be taking profit that you could've reaped on your own if you chose to sublet.
 
13342316:timmi said:
I can get behind this idea. I am not sure I would have done it myself in college but I think the idea is legit. I've never felt comfortable with the idea of Air BnB and whatnot. Don't want a stranger in my home.

The fact that you pack everything up and redecorate is interesting. Doesn't that erode your margins too much?
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Yeah that's definitely a concern people have. The ideas is that at the end of the day if you're going to be subletting your place to someone that you also don't really know, with Flatbook at least you get the guarantee that rent will be paid and defer all the responsibility of taking care of the place to us (plus insurance, etc.)

And as for the margins not really, we see it is a necessary expense - in some cases it can even increase our margins since people are willing to pay more for a nice place, so it evens out most of the time. Of course it's not like we do full-on renovations, but it's much easier for us to maintain a consistent standard for our guests if we bring our own stuff in.
 
Holy shit what a bad idea, the amount of legal litigation and property damage you'll have to go through is going to be insane. Not only that, but it's going to be over 30 different cities with different laws, and you realize you're going to have to check with the landlord to make sure it's okay.
 
13342928:zzzskizzz said:
Holy shit what a bad idea, the amount of legal litigation and property damage you'll have to go through is going to be insane. Not only that, but it's going to be over 30 different cities with different laws, and you realize you're going to have to check with the landlord to make sure it's okay.
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Haha of course, like I said above this isn't something I'm "working on with a buddy of mine".

Also I'm not sure where you see the potential for massive property damage. For one, thousands of Airbnb bookings/stays happen every day across the world with no problems whatsoever. Of course we have coverage for our properties and what not but even before that, we screen our guests with scrutiny just like any other Airbnb host would.

This is our third year in operation and while we certainly have made some mistakes in the past (mostly to do with operations/logistics for cleaning - we're actually in the process of setting up our own cleaning company as a subsidiary so we can ensure consistent quality) we've learned and grown from them into our current position today.

Definitely grateful for the feedback/criticism though. These are all concerns that we as a company need to address for our clients whether it's tangible issues or simply perception, and this helps us gain more perspective into how people perceive our proposition.
 
13342952:Obsessedwski said:
Haha of course, like I said above this isn't something I'm "working on with a buddy of mine".

Also I'm not sure where you see the potential for massive property damage. For one, thousands of Airbnb bookings/stays happen every day across the world with no problems whatsoever. Of course we have coverage for our properties and what not but even before that, we screen our guests with scrutiny just like any other Airbnb host would.

This is our third year in operation and while we certainly have made some mistakes in the past (mostly to do with operations/logistics for cleaning - we're actually in the process of setting up our own cleaning company as a subsidiary so we can ensure consistent quality) we've learned and grown from them into our current position today.

Definitely grateful for the feedback/criticism though. These are all concerns that we as a company need to address for our clients whether it's tangible issues or simply perception, and this helps us gain more perspective into how people perceive our proposition.
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Because you haven't tested the model, and you haven't sold through. Yet you want to expand to 35 cities, do you have an office station in every city? Are you going to hire 40+ people to look after those rooms that's you buy?That's too big to fast, and if you haven't ran your financial numbers and you guys can't see that. You guys have little business experience, and you're in a ton of trouble.

This business isn't as easy as buy a room decorate it, and then you're set.
 
Put Sacramento on the list and you have a deal. I'm going away for 6 weeks and I really don't want to find a subletter.

Nobody wants to vaycay here though lol.
 
13342968:zzzskizzz said:
Because you haven't tested the model, and you haven't sold through. Yet you want to expand to 35 cities, do you have an office station in every city? Are you going to hire 40+ people to look after those rooms that's you buy?That's too big to fast, and if you haven't ran your financial numbers and you guys can't see that. You guys have little business experience, and you're in a ton of trouble.

This business isn't as easy as buy a room decorate it, and then you're set.
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you know no one likes you right
 
13343030:erikK said:
you know no one likes you right
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You know I don't give a fuck and I'm right, right? I just looked at their financials they made a hundred seventy thousand dollars in 3 years, and that's before paying themselves and their employees.
 
I would maybe be interested if you offered this in Medellin.

What kind of positions are you hiring for?
 
13342968:zzzskizzz said:
Because you haven't tested the model, and you haven't sold through. Yet you want to expand to 35 cities, do you have an office station in every city? Are you going to hire 40+ people to look after those rooms that's you buy?That's too big to fast, and if you haven't ran your financial numbers and you guys can't see that. You guys have little business experience, and you're in a ton of trouble.

This business isn't as easy as buy a room decorate it, and then you're set.
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im with ya on this. its a lot of cities, needing a lot of emplyees, paying a lot of people, and dealing with a hole shit ton of landlords. and landlords are all scum of the earth. If I owned property, and found out my tennants used your service, and you made money from it, I want that money and then some. I am sure you guys have someway figured out ways around this but im not getting the concept.
 
13343032:zzzskizzz said:
You know I don't give a fuck and I'm right, right? I just looked at their financials they made a hundred seventy thousand dollars in 3 years, and that's before paying themselves and their employees.
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Hahaha, none of our financials are public.

13343152:shibby said:
I would maybe be interested if you offered this in Medellin.

What kind of positions are you hiring for?
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Columbia? We're not in South America yet, but maybe next year!

You can check out our job postings here:https://angel.co/flatbook/jobs

13343157:cobra_commander said:
has this not been done already?

airbnb anyone? I get that your business model is slightly different, but really...
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Absolutely, we actually use Airbnb to list our properties. Our target market isn't people who want to be Airbnb hosts themselves - rather it's people like students or young professionals who simply want to leave town for an internship/travel/etc. for an extended period of time, and doesn't want to pay rent or deal with the hassle and risk of traditional subletting.

13343159:soup said:
im with ya on this. its a lot of cities, needing a lot of emplyees, paying a lot of people, and dealing with a hole shit ton of landlords. and landlords are all scum of the earth. If I owned property, and found out my tennants used your service, and you made money from it, I want that money and then some. I am sure you guys have someway figured out ways around this but im not getting the concept.
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Yup, you got it! It's a huge challenge for sure, but we have the team to pull it off. It's also why we're hiring a team of regional managers in each city we're operational in.

As for the landlords, a lot of the time we work directly with them. Most property management companies charge a percentage of rent, but we do it for free instead and make our cut during the summer. Sure some landlords are sharks (and we make sure to avoid those), but most just hold their properties as income investments. In those cases if the property is a good fit for what we're looking for, we'll sign directly with the landlords to manage their properties year round and we find the tenants/furnish the place for them. The way they see it it's less work and a near guarantee of rent income.
 
Sweet! so you get rid of permanent residents who provide the particular neighborhood feel of the area and replace them with trust fund kids looking to be parasites of that particular city for the summer, all while driving up rent!

sounds freaking awesome!
 
Dude you are offering zero incentive for someone to have their home totally destroyed (temporarily maybe) and taken over by unknown amounts of strangers. And you only want to pay the normal monthly rent for this???

I can't imagine anyone agrees you guys must get your properties by just signing normal leases yourselves and pretending to be a tenant and just picking places you won't get kicked out for subletting to different people the entire time.

Yikes man I'd think you'd have to be offering double market rates to get anyone to bite and vacate their space and let you do this realistically.

From the travelers end of things what makes you guys different than airbnb or are you pretty much the same thing?
 
13343391:influenza said:
This turned into shark tank really quick
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Haha yeah I expected as much, it's NS. For the amount of people who reply with scepticism though there's a bunch who've already applied because of this thread. I'm guessing most of the replies are from people who don't have the problem we're addressing, I can definitely see why this would sound like a bad idea to kids in high school.

13343437:californiagrown said:
Sweet! so you get rid of permanent residents who provide the particular neighborhood feel of the area and replace them with trust fund kids looking to be parasites of that particular city for the summer, all while driving up rent!

sounds freaking awesome!
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Not at all - it's mostly families and young professionals who rent our places for the summer months, and it's usually like a few days or a week or two max. Also for 8 months of the year it's students that are living in these properties, who rent locally anyways while going to school. So there isn't much change in the demographics caused by this, we just match supply and demand better during the summer when there's often a mismatch.

13343530:MCsugarcat said:
Dude you are offering zero incentive for someone to have their home totally destroyed (temporarily maybe) and taken over by unknown amounts of strangers. And you only want to pay the normal monthly rent for this???

I can't imagine anyone agrees you guys must get your properties by just signing normal leases yourselves and pretending to be a tenant and just picking places you won't get kicked out for subletting to different people the entire time.

Yikes man I'd think you'd have to be offering double market rates to get anyone to bite and vacate their space and let you do this realistically.

From the travelers end of things what makes you guys different than airbnb or are you pretty much the same thing?
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We don't do short-term rentals for the whole year, only during the summer. I might've used this example above too but say you're a college student in Boston, and get an internship in NYC. You're going to have to sublet your place in Boston to a relative stranger and most likely lose some rent from being lowballed, or worse might have to just pay 4 months of rent for a place you don't even use during that time.

For people like that it's not about making money on their place, they want to just forget about it for those 4 months and not lose money. We give them that peace of mind and guarantee their rent, so all they have to worry about is performing at their best for the internship.

Obviously we don't rent it out as event properties or to a group of college kids looking for a party pad. Mostly families actually, or tourists and young professionals. For them it's the unique experience of an Airbnb but with the reliability and convenience of a brand name hotel - they get perks like 24/7 concierge support, iPhones pre-loaded with apps, and grocery delivery. The consistent quality and standards across the 30+ cities is also a huge plus over normal Airbnbs.
 
13343578:Obsessedwski said:
Nope. Like I said, our financials aren't online. We're based in Montreal. A+ for effort, not so much on execution haha
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You said you started 3 years ago so 2011 fits the time frame, and since you're rolling out internationally and so many cities having over a hundred employees seems about right ago so it fits.

But again I think rolling out internationally with having every single one of your locations owned by a different landlord. You're going to run into some problems you're not going to proceed.

I think if you focused on one city and you had 10,000 even 5,000 houses and you were able to make that to work. Then you can move into the eight major cities in America. If you can make that work out then you can roll out internationally and begin to franchise And include other people To run it.

I think going balls to the wall and just trying to get every major city everywhere is way too much work and I don't think you realize what you're getting yourself into or the Capitol you're going to need to oversee it. Just my 02.
 
13343379:zzzskizzz said:
apparently I know more about your company than you do.
http://m.hoovers.com/company-information/cs/company-profile.FLATBOOK_eU.bf85577b3d7194df.html
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That website is rubbish. The revenue they list is just a complete guess. They certainly don't have access to revenue canada information.

Even if it was right, 170k/year for a startout business that's just working summers is great.

Dunno why you're so against their idea. It's working and seems like a good idea. Jealous maybe
 
13343638:zzzskizzz said:
You said you started 3 years ago so 2011 fits the time frame, and since you're rolling out internationally and so many cities having over a hundred employees seems about right ago so it fits.

But again I think rolling out internationally with having every single one of your locations owned by a different landlord. You're going to run into some problems you're not going to proceed.

I think if you focused on one city and you had 10,000 even 5,000 houses and you were able to make that to work. Then you can move into the eight major cities in America. If you can make that work out then you can roll out internationally and begin to franchise And include other people To run it.

I think going balls to the wall and just trying to get every major city everywhere is way too much work and I don't think you realize what you're getting yourself into or the Capitol you're going to need to oversee it. Just my 02.
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Pretty sure you're trolling at this point, but the link you referenced says they're in the telecom business. I'll leave it at that haha

Also what makes you think we haven't done all the things you mentioned already? (Also 5-10k of houses is just ridiculous, that'd be a a small city!). I think our team is perfectly aware what we're getting into, as are our investors - who've contributed the capitAl to fund our growth. You can have your $0.02 back if you'd like?
 
There is no way I'm trusting some random company on the other side of the world to handle and take care of my own apartment while someone i don't know is living there.
 
13343753:Obsessedwski said:
Pretty sure you're trolling at this point, but the link you referenced says they're in the telecom business. I'll leave it at that haha

Also what makes you think we haven't done all the things you mentioned already? (Also 5-10k of houses is just ridiculous, that'd be a a small city!). I think our team is perfectly aware what we're getting into, as are our investors - who've contributed the capitAl to fund our growth. You can have your $0.02 back if you'd like?
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I know that's not your company now. I was saying that's why I thought it was because it match with everything you said.

I will give it to you I have been riding you pretty hard, because I didn't really take you seriously, I never do on newschoolers. But as much of a dick as I've been you have represented yourself pretty professionally, and I do respect that. I don't know what that says about your business experience, but at the end of the day your reputation is everything.

maybe you are a huge company And I have just going completely under the radar. But yeah good luck to rolling out internationally, you're going to need it that's going to be an insane amount of work.

and before you completely write me off I actually am related to Peter Lewis who was the ceo progressive. He had a heart attack last year, but he was worth over 1 billion before he died. So I do know a little bit about business, so as my apology if you want send me a PM I'll shoot you my email, and if you have a problem in future you need help with. I won't be able to help you but I can definitely put you in touch with someone who can. k byeeeeeeeeeee
 
13343594:Obsessedwski said:
Not at all - it's mostly families and young professionals who rent our places for the summer months, and it's usually like a few days or a week or two max. Also for 8 months of the year it's students that are living in these properties, who rent locally anyways while going to school. So there isn't much change in the demographics caused by this, we just match supply and demand better during the summer when there's often a mismatch.
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Thats what AirBNB does as well. "its mainly families and young progfessionals" WTF do you think young professionals do you moron? they are fresh outta college with money to burn; the party their faces off.

Companies like yours are fucking wrecking neighborhoods in great cities pissing off all the other people who live their full time. you jack up the rent sky high(if you didnt the margins on base rent + re-furnishment would be waaaaay too low), and force normal people out of the market.

You are fucking parasites. Take as much as you can, and give back nothing to the city you use.
 
13343780:californiagrown said:
Thats what AirBNB does as well. "its mainly families and young progfessionals" WTF do you think young professionals do you moron? they are fresh outta college with money to burn; the party their faces off.

Companies like yours are fucking wrecking neighborhoods in great cities pissing off all the other people who live their full time. you jack up the rent sky high(if you didnt the margins on base rent + re-furnishment would be waaaaay too low), and force normal people out of the market.

You are fucking parasites. Take as much as you can, and give back nothing to the city you use.
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I can't remember exactly what you do, but didn't you live in SF with some fancy engineer job and price out local residents?
 
13342885:funk~ said:
you give them your place for the summer. they apparently spruce it up for travelers who are looking for a place to stay in those cities. then they charge huge amounts of money for those said travelers to live there while you're gone.

i think its a good idea and kind of dumb at the same time. on one hand you are formalizing the subletting process through a middle man. on the other hand you are putting in a middle man, so they are going to be taking profit that you could've reaped on your own if you chose to sublet.
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IIIIIIIII LOOOOOOVE YOU JEEEESUUUUS CHRIIIIST

JEEEESUS CHRIST I LOOOVE YOU YEEES I DO
 
13343769:zzzskizzz said:
I know that's not your company now. I was saying that's why I thought it was because it match with everything you said.

I will give it to you I have been riding you pretty hard, because I didn't really take you seriously, I never do on newschoolers. But as much of a dick as I've been you have represented yourself pretty professionally, and I do respect that. I don't know what that says about your business experience, but at the end of the day your reputation is everything.

maybe you are a huge company And I have just going completely under the radar. But yeah good luck to rolling out internationally, you're going to need it that's going to be an insane amount of work.

and before you completely write me off I actually am related to Peter Lewis who was the ceo progressive. He had a heart attack last year, but he was worth over 1 billion before he died. So I do know a little bit about business, so as my apology if you want send me a PM I'll shoot you my email, and if you have a problem in future you need help with. I won't be able to help you but I can definitely put you in touch with someone who can. k byeeeeeeeeeee
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Haha yeah I've been on NS since '08 so I know how it is, I used to get so damn riled up about things looking back some of my past threads now it's pretty funny.

And thanks for the well wishes man - as much as we'd like to say it's all skill and merit, a lot of business is luck so we'll certainly take as much as we can get. I'll definitely keep you in mind for the future, appreciate the offer!
 
13343794:SKI.ING said:
I can't remember exactly what you do, but didn't you live in SF with some fancy engineer job and price out local residents?
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Absolutely. I used to think it wouldnt affect anybody, and just put money into the SF economy. And then i lived there. I saw the quirkiness of most of the neighborhoods being destroyed by "young professionals" who planned to live up there for a year or two for "the experience" and then would move away. It totally wrecks the feel and turns the place into a neighborhood 1 or 2 degrees culturally different than the Marina.

there is a reason Oakland is blowing up...an its not cause the place is safe or pretty. Its cause the rent is cheap.

The issue is this company could, and if succesful will, influence landlords to create leases with an increased summer rent, or a higher overall rent rate.

I mean its a good business model: create a service that attracts an increasingly more affluent clientele, while becoming increasingly unavailable to the less affluent clientele. unfortunatley this business model also negativley affects the other 95% of the country.
 
13343780:californiagrown said:
Thats what AirBNB does as well. "its mainly families and young progfessionals" WTF do you think young professionals do you moron? they are fresh outta college with money to burn; the party their faces off.

Companies like yours are fucking wrecking neighborhoods in great cities pissing off all the other people who live their full time. you jack up the rent sky high(if you didnt the margins on base rent + re-furnishment would be waaaaay too low), and force normal people out of the market.

You are fucking parasites. Take as much as you can, and give back nothing to the city you use.
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I think you know a different breed of young professional than we do... could you introduce us? If they're able to party their faces off on work trips while still performing in the kinds of jobs that expense travel, they're doing something right!

As for forcing people out of the market, you have to realize we rent to the local [student] market for the months they're in school. Which means our rent prices still have to be competitive in order for us not to lose money from having our properties sit empty.

I think what you're talking about are companies who run their properties as vacation rentals year-round. In that case since the annual return on investment for the property is far greater, it can push up prices in the market as their revenues allow them to pay more for the cost of the living space. What we're doing is a little different, because we're gathering unused supply and matching it with the demand in a parallel market for the months where it's relevant.

The rest of the year we're simply a normal property management company that comes with extra perks for students like bi-weekly cleaning. There really shouldn't be any distortion in the market caused with our model as far as I can see - if we did cause rent increases it would end up hurting us for the 8-months of the year that we operate in the rental market. Sorry if that got a little technical, I'm an economist by training so I get a little jargon-y sometimes!
 
13343895:californiagrown said:
The issue is this company could, and if succesful will, influence landlords to create leases with an increased summer rent, or a higher overall rent rate.
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Yeah I see what you're saying. Not necessarily by our actions, but theoretically landlords could try to replicate our model individually.

It actually already happens in San Diego. My friend lives right next to Mission beach where it's largely a student community, and the landlords there offer 8-month leases tailored specifically to student needs so they can rent it out over the summer as short-term vacations.

That being said, there's a limited market for that. There's only so many landlords that can do that before there's no one left to sign the 8-month leases - for most demographics the standard 12-month lease is the only one that makes sense.

So definitely possible, but highly unlikely that our model will end up shifting the market like standard Airbnbs might.
 
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