In a comment on an earlier YoChicago post Michael Krasman, one of the founders of Homescout Realty (I don’t link to apartment rental services) posed the following question to me:
I know you may not be currently looking for an apartment, but wouldn’t you agree that if you knew little about the city of Chicago OR were a busy individual who wanted someone to help you navigate the marketplace, there would be value in calling a company like Homescout Realty. Our real estate consultants know the available inventory in the city and can greatly reduce the amount of time and energy that it would otherwise take to identify the ideal property for a given situation.
Do I see value in calling Homescout Realty? No, not much. Not enough to make me pick up the phone if I were looking for an apartment in Chicago for the first time. That would be true even if I didn’t already know that the odds are that I’d be working with a recent college grad who’s yet to be licensed and probably can’t afford the apartments s/he’d be showing me.
If you spend a bit of time deconstructing Homescout’s voluminous postings on Craigslist you’ll quickly learn that the majority of those postings are repetitive and represent a fairly small number of large rental complexes. You can easily find those same complexes on ForRent.Com, Apartments.com and any number of other online services. You’ll also find them in the handy pocket-sized apartment guide available at most supermarkets. And you’ll find quite a few others that apparently don’t cooperate with Homescout Realty.
The major online rental sites will give you more complete information (generally including floor plans and higher-quality photos) than you’ll get from Homescout postings, and you’ll have the advantage of getting information from the source. Read some of the less than positive reviews of Homescout on Yelp and you’ll understand why that’s important.
In today’s hyper-competitive rental market you may be able to negotiate a better deal directly with a landlord who doesn’t have to pay a commission on your lease.
The way I look at it, the insane volume of duplicated ads that Homescout and the other rental service maggots post on Craigslist is a desperate attempt to pollute Craigslist and create a need for their services. I view the sheer volume of those ads as an act of aggression against renters, a time-waster and disservice of the worst kind. If someone dumped a half-ton of manure in your living room, you’d want to call a service to clean it up, but you wouldn’t call the people who dumped it there.
If you’re looking to rent in a high-rise or other large apartment complex you can easily find what Homescout has to offer and more. If you’re looking for that ideal 2-flat in one of the neighborhoods or a bargain rent from a condo owner – well, just search Craigslist and see how very little Homescout has to offer in those areas.
You asked, Michael. I’ve given you my opinion. I’m looking forward to our meeting.
joe,
this is getting ridicules. and i say that as a long time fan of yo. it is clear the HSR model is just-out-of-college young professionals who lease apartments to their peers (a large market). i understand they start at a low commission split and they learn the business. if they like the business – they **legally** have some amount of time (90 days?) to become a licensed “leasing agent”. as we all now know – this law is changing at the end of they year and ALL real estate professionals will need become licensed brokers. (at that time we can assume many agents will pursue other fields of business) additionally the state is cracking down on shops for compliance. as such, no broker employing 30+ agents is going to allow for any unlicensed agents to operate under their oversight.
these guys (mike & jeff) own several overlapping businesses with an original focus on headhunting young professionals -a company called ‘humital’. as apt finders go, they are a relatively small shop. as they grow, i’m sure they will work out the kinks.
meanwhile ALL the big shops, (rubloff, etc) are starting to focus more on rentals and as they do – competition will drive out those who are not serious about the business.
disclosure: i am a lincoln park landlord who does not cooperate with rental agents and a real estate professional not affiliated with home scout.
halsted,
Current law – which expires as you note at year-end – allows up to 120 days of working without a license while the licensing process is completed.
As someone whose firm works with a number of the city’s larger, more established, more ethical brokers,, I fondly wish it were the case that competition drove the bad guys out of business. There’s a long, sad history of that not being the case.
If anything, I see the industry going in the opposite direction of late. Some firms that are toxic in my opinion have exploited the Internet to do a large volume of business in what I think most people would deem a blatantly fraudulent fashion. The state is ill-equipped to deal with this problem and it goes almost entirely unadreessed.
When I moved to Chicago three years ago, I did use a rental service I had no idea where to look and only had 1 week to find a place.
To me they were helpful at that time and given my situation. Would I use such service today? Probably not I have a better understanding of the city, but I can see these type of services being useful to someone new like I was 3yrs ago and with limited time.
But with that said it should definitely be an honest business and they should fallow the law.
This post is incredibly unfair to manure. Manure is great for conditioning the hard clay soil here in the city, I would gladly take a half ton of manure (tho’ preferably not in my living room).
May I suggest to searchers that Craigslist allows negative searches, just like Google. By adding a few search terms to your search, you can filter out a lot of the crap, at least that comes from the “more reputable” (on a relative scale) establishments that identify themselves. Searching for something like
“West Loop” -Homescout -People -Finders
removes certainly not all, but a big chunk of the spam. You can add more items for your un-favorite places as you like.
Great tip, Jeff.
The thing that bugs me the most about HS is that they post listings with pictures that are misleading..most of them will have pictures of two completely different units, almost like bad car salesmen that have great cars in the ads, tell you to come in but when you get to the dealership the car in the ad is no where to be found but they will quickly offer you substitutions.
Joe,
Am curious if you actually ended up meeting with Michael from Homescout? What did you learn / find out during your meeting? Anything new besides what we already know from your post…
I did meet with Michael and his partner, at some length.
Prior to the meeting I prepared for some lawyerly grilling. My impression: these are guys who have no regard for the law or the truth. They’re personally disarming, superficially honest, charming in the manner of many sociopaths, and easy to profess a willingness to correct any mistakes they’ve made.
I found it impossible to believe a word of their protestations that they want to be the good guys in this industry.
So what is the problem with home scout other than placing multiple posts on craigslist?
I personally hate individuals who throw up multiple posts on craigslist (too much noise) but if it is generating leads and sales then what is wrong with their apporach.