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faisalkhalid80

Re:On the Loss of a Cofounder on Tuesday November 24, 2020 @09:31PM (#25205376)
Very very sorry to hear this. I spoke to him twice and exchanged a few WhatsApp messages with him in August. I was in the S20 batch and he was interested in angel investing in my startup.

He told me about how his life had changed with his recent baby. We discovered that my brother and his wife had worked at the same law firm. He was a genuinely nice guy.

Very sad to see this news.

Hello. That was a different product...
Hi! Founder here. Yes we’re in the process.
Re:Show HN: Bits – Superpower Your Money on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @11:37AM (#19859844)
www.getbits.app
Re:Show HN: An interest-free credit card for millennials on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @09:56AM (#18075951)
yes, and no (cash back).

Ask HN: Would a decentralised home sale network work?

Right now the way homes get sold in the UK is through aggregators - Rightmove, Zoopla, Onthemarket are where all buyers start their home purchase journey from.But this is a rigged system, in the sense that it gives brokers immense power and makes them essentially indispensable.I've been thinking about a different way of doing this - totally decentralised.Each property has its own website (like...

( Read More... | 1 comment | on HN )
Re:Are short-term home sellers screwed? on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @09:39AM (#16106427)
You're right, I should do the math on trxn costs in my next update - the main ones are stamp duty on purchase and broker fees on sale. The minor ones are moving costs and legal fees on buying and selling. Capex I'll have to ignore because I have no data on this.

Still, if you assume the broker got paid say 1.5%-2.0%, the stamp duty was 3.5-4.0%, there's still a sizeable margin in between.

Re:Are short-term home sellers screwed? on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @08:42AM (#16106044)
Limited by data here unfortunately. The data source I'm using is Land Registry, which only shows successful deals. Regarding transaction costs, in the UK its around 1.5% for broker fees, plus moving and legal costs. There's also capital gains tax on profits generated on the sale, which is a complex mathematic, and applies if its 'not your first home'. And stamp duty (varies by price) which you pay on purchase.

I understand all of your points, and from what you're saying, with the fee levels you've described, it does sound like the UK is different from Canada.

Re:Are short-term home sellers screwed? on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @08:38AM (#16106010)
Sorry about that, will look into this particular case and fix. For square footage we rely on EPC certificates which sadly are not always accurate.
Re:Are short-term home sellers screwed? on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @07:18AM (#16105592)
The analysis is just for London
Re:Are short-term home sellers screwed? on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @07:12AM (#16105549)
Negative data would be very helpful, unfortunately its harder to get. The data I used was from Land Registry UK which only captures successful transactions.
Re:Are short-term home sellers screwed? on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @07:11AM (#16105542)
Hm, no we are not an estate agency :) Not yet. I was just curious about whether the widely held belief that short term sales are disadvantageous to home owners is true or not, thats what motivated the post.
> My guess is that it will push you to use products where the app gets a commission.

Not really - the whole idea is to provide unbiased and honest advice. The kind that your best friend would give you. We don't make any referral fees. Maybe this changes later, but we'll have to think hard about how to do it without diluting what we're trying to do.

> Also, i dont understand the SMS part, cant you just offer the advice on the home page with a chat UI ?

Web based chat UI is hard for us to do now because we need to check every response manually before it goes out. This takes time. A few hours, maybe more. With web based chatbots, people expect instant responses. If we try to be instant, we will end up compromising on accuracy, which is something we don't want to do right now. With SMS, our feeling is that people are used to waiting.. the expectation for speed of response is a bit lower than what it is for web based chatbots, which suits us well for now.

Thank you for the feedback - I'll work on this.

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