It seems it's in their job description to try to convince me to pay more for less. They listen carefully to my requirements and then take me to places that don't match at all.
I guess they figure since I've taken my entire afternoon with them, and since they've been friendly, I might give up on what I'm looking for and rent whatever it is they decided to shill that day.
Of all the countries I've rented in and had occasion to interact with agents, ones in Turkey behaved the most like cartoon caricatures: they use every sitcom used car salesman trick in the book. It would be funny to watch, except that they're perpetually wasting their time and mine.
She was pretty much useless. Most of the places she sent us didn't match our criteria very well, and quite a few were above where we wanted to spend. As each day went by and we nixxed place after place she clearly de-prioritized us in her work (I'm assuming she was working with multiple other people who were looking for places) and became less responsive.
At the end of the day I had to do my own hunt and fly up a second time to look at places over a weekend to find something.
And that's a paid agent from a large moving corp. I do wonder if a (more expensive) boutique agent would have been more effective but honestly having worked in real estate I consider them all at the same level as used car salesmen anyway.
As an aside I also tried to automate my apartment hunt. The main thing that matters in NYC is time to respond. Unfortunately Zillow, StreetEasy, etc are not very easy to automate on the messaging side due to bot countermeasures. It was an incredibly time consuming, manual process. Happily found a great place though.
In NYC specifically, there are agencies that make most of their business from renter-side representation. You can find the good ones easily on the usual review sites.
In Melbourne Australia, what I have seen is that rental agents are different and the real estate agents are different although they work for the same company.
As someone else in this thread noted, the landlord often hires an agent because they don't want to deal with the tidal wave of crap that comes from dealing with applicants. That person gets paid, obviously, and the landlord isn't the one paying them. That's the rate you're talking about here. These people are not incentivized to provide good service to the renter, and typically don't. They suck.
Higher-end buildings often have in-house agents (again: you're paying for this, whether you realize it or not), and these are called "no fee" buildings. But an increasing number of places don't have either, and just provide access to professional renter's agents instead of listing publicly. Or they do list publicly, and barely respond to the tidal wave of yahoos, knowing that motivated renters hire an agent. YMMV.
You know how we know this is a solvable problem? Listings for places to buy don’t have nearly as many problems.
> You know how we know this is a solvable problem? Listings for places to buy don’t have nearly as many problems.
Just as OP said, there are tons of sites out there that claim to "solve" this, but don't. So no, I don't know that this is a computer-solvable problem.
There are agencies that make most of their business in this area, and generally have better rate structures (typically a month or two of rent, flat rate). Others want to charge you on a percentage basis, which you can negotiate, and obviously changes the incentive structure. All of these are "expensive" (relative to free), but worth it depending on how you value your time.
Other people are (rightly) noting that there is risk of getting a scammy real estate agent, but that's true of any service. You have to look at reviews and trust your gut. Good real estate agents are motivated to do the right thing for you, because they see it as a marketing channel into larger sales in the future. Bad real estate agents are in it only for the immediate cash. These people behave in such obviously different ways that they're pretty easy to discriminate, in practice.
The only way they might be working for you is if you are paying them an hourly rate or per showing or something like that.
If you're saying that someone doesn't "work for you" unless you pay them a flat or hourly rate, then I disagree completely. All incentive structures have problems. Someone who works on contingency is incentivized to get you to sign. If they take a percentage cut, of course, they want you to sign the most expensive thing they can. Someone who works on a flat-rate basis is incentivized to do as little custom work as possible. Someone who works on an hourly basis is incentivized to drag out the proceedings. There is no perfect system.
Most of these agreements are structured where the fee is paid by you, after signing a lease, as a function of the monthly/annual rental price. The agent works for you, you just don't pay up front or a fixed cost or on an hourly basis. Does this change the incentive structure? Yes. Does it mean that they don't provide you a benefit? No. You just have to be aware of the incentives.
Just like when buying a house, an apartment broker works on behalf of the landlord or the tenant. They charge a fee which is a percentage of a year’s rent. It is negotiable.
I hesitate to say it, but there is already a solution to this, and it has been the one that New York has had for years: you hire an agent. A good agent will sort through all of that for you, and streamline the process to the point where you can go from search to signing in under a week (if not quicker). Of course, there's the problem of bad agents, but that's true of anything. As you note, online services are often bad, as well.
In other words, I don't see this as a problem without a solution; I see it as a problem without a software automated solution, which is true for a lot of problems in life, particularly ones that involve huge numbers of messy, opinionated people with different motivations and interests.