Subscribe
Sign in
Flatbook — We pay your rent while you're away, guaranteed.
76
Replies
Best
@rrhoover Thanks for the love Ryan :)
We do love helping digital nomads pursue their dreams. It's all a part of the mission!
Hey ProductHunters!
We're really excited to be introducing Flatbook to ProductHunt today. In 2013, our team set out to solve the subletting problem. After enabling hundreds of people to save over $500,000 in rent last year alone, we realized that the true vision of our company is actually to remove the need to sublet altogether.
Flatbook pays your rent while you're away, guaranteed. How are we able to do that? We've written a short Medium post to go over Flatbook in greater detail and you can take a look at it here.
One last thing:
We're happy to provide ProductHunters with an exclusive cash bonus offer granting you an additional $100 on top of your rent paid this summer. All you need to do to lock that in is make sure to apply before April 15th.
Applications for Flatbook's North American Subletting program close on May 1st. Applications for Flatbook's European Subletting program close on June 1st.
@sempler they re-style the apartment, photograph it better, rent out the place at a greater per night rate than your monthly rent and keep the difference. Ugh. Why didn't I think of this? Pretty cool.
@sempler Airbnb is one of many booking platforms. Flatbook leverages Airbnb as well as other platforms to offer the inventory it builds over the year (through sublet applications for instance) at nightly rates.
We're different from Airbnb in that fundamentally our businesses are not the same. Our goal is to distribute the authenticity of the best vacation rentals with the standards of the best hotel brands by taking control of that experience, leveraging the best local flavors of its properties and utilizing a sophisticated operations workflow to give you that Hotel consistency while retaining the look and feel of an Airbnb.
Our Subletting Program (http://flatbook.co/sublet) solves the pain of having to sublet. Our Leasing Program (http://flatbook.co/leases) removes the need to sublet altogether.
Hopefully that answers your question! :)
@eyaltoledano Are you in Atlanta, Georgia? Also, how do you handle making sure the guests abide by any rules of the building (i.e. no smoking, quiet hours, etc)... the kind of rules that can cause big issues for the lease holder/owner if they are not followed by their guests?
How do you deal with apartments whom by contract can't be Subletted. Many landlords are against it and specifically ask not to subrent. Can you do offices Too?
@ourielohayon We don't do offices. If your landlord doesn't allow subletting, we cannot accept the apartment.
One of the more impressive products on PH in a while. I do wonder about the unit economics but the value prop especially to the college student who rents a year lease or the remote worker/long travel crowd is immense.
@dshan Thank you Derek! We do find very innovative ways with internal tools and processes that keep our unit economics at a very healthy level. And yes, we've seen an incredible response to our value prop :)
I have a rule not to check out or upvote products on top... don't ask me why, I'm just stubborn. But... after seeing a few tweets, I resigned myself to see the site, and WOW, the video is great. It makes me feel happy and comfortable and... well, I'd use your service. Kudos. ;)
cool. seems similar to the program that Pillow recently announced: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mariahsu...
I've hung out in a restyled apartment from Flatbook while in MTL - fantastic experience. Looking forward to seeing you expand into Ottawa so I can make all my incoming friends / colleagues stay with you.
@brandonwaselnuk Hey Brandon! Thanks for the shoutout :)
We actually are live in Ottawa. More than 70 people have already applied to have Flatbook sublet their apartment. Feel free to drop us a line!
Really interesting idea! I think you guys @eyaltoledano are already subletting in Quebec city, right? Is there a minimum period? We have a nice home in down town and are leaving for 2 months, really thinking about trying this!
p.s. AirBnB would have been to much pain to dealt with, dont want to spent time finding someone to take care of guests, cleaning up, etc ...
@plehoux Hey Philippe! Yep, inventory in Quebec / Montreal area is the meatiest across the board. The minimum period is two months, or more specifically availability between May 1st and end of September. In other words, we build inventory ahead of the summer (tourism) months.
I'd be happy to forward your property to our Expansion team. Perhaps we can squeeze you in. :-) Feel free to email me at my first name dot last name at flabook dot co - happy to help you out.
Is this just for apartments or can it also be used for houses? My brother is building an ever growing list of houses he rents out, typically by room. It's usually college students / professionals that are kind of "nerdy" but want to live around people. Could this service be used to modernize the interior of his houses by room and offload his need for finding tenants?
@webaddict Very good question. Though our Subletting Program typically sees mostly apartment applications, we have accepted houses in the past.
Your brother definitely could make use of it and he wouldn't have to deal with per-room leases. We'd take over entire apartments, pay up to 100% of his mortgage and utilities and manage it on our end.
I should mention that we are working on a special project for landlords.
@eyaltoledano I will let him and my Uncle know about your service. My Uncle is a landlord of over 500 units and is looking for a way to take some of the load out of the process. Excited about this! :P
@webaddict There's excellent alignment with your uncle. Happy to hop on a call with him at some point. Feel free to connect us and thanks a lot for thinking about us!
@eyaltoledano Wow, this is the kind of go-getter attitude that makes or breaks a company. I'll talk with them both and see if we can setup a meeting!
@webaddict Awesome. You can either reach me through Twitter or my firstname.lastname@flatbook.co
Oh this looks pretty awesome. Would I be able to use Flatbook even if I am renting the flat? I mean, even if I am not the "owner" @eyaltoledano?
@tcailhol So long as everything's cool with the landlord (he doesn't mind subletting), no problem.
I should note that we only accept full apartments (not single rooms). The minimum time for availability is two months and ideally the date range would sit between May 1st and end of September.
Good concept, assuming publicly big profits and using it for guaranteed payment.
FYI, what I felt the most unsure about when reading the landing page was to what extent flat may be modified. In case of subletting, a customer may want to be sure it won't be anything big or irreversible that could lead to problems with landlord.
@oelmekki Great piece of feedback.
What Flatbook does for its subletting customers is *rearrange* the furniture, bring in nice, comfortable bedding (our own beds), deep clean the apartment and then add local artist paintings and some decoration to highlight the local authenticity elements of the area.
We do light renovation and refurnishing for our long-term lease customers. You can learn more about it here: https://flatbook.co/leases
Definitely plan on making this information more obvious on the Sublet page.
Thanks a lot!
Congrats on all the success! We were literally talking with a Toronto Star reporter about you today and she ate up the idea of a consistent brand for short-term rentals. The value prop for people subletting is so simple to - just give us the keys and your rent is covered!
Damn. I literally need this right now (I'm already out of the place, but my current sublet leaves in a month) - but you don't accept individual rooms. :(
@iamfledge Unfortunately single rooms aren't good candidates. We really try to focus on full apartments in the right areas. Sorry!
@eyaltoledano @rogerh1991 fyi, there's a typo on https://flatbook.co/leases - additional (instead of aditional) - http://d.pr/i/174fT
I had to rent out my and all my roommates rooms one summer bc they were studying abroad. It was terrible. Great Idea
Thanks for the love Ian! I was just reading the Tnooz piece. It's great that we're growing the space together :)
More people in the space means the data and learning here are filled with potential, and of course, we have plenty of both :)
Well done- is this the next gen. airbnb? it`s pretty awesome - hope you pull this one off - how does this sit with owners? Does this service have the same trouble as airbnb with local renting regulations?
@assafdagan We see Airbnb as more of a partner than a competitor.
One of the biggest impediments in the sharing economy is the inconsistency between AirBnb apartment experiences.
Our goal is to eventually coalesce it together to offer the consistency of service expected from the world's top accommodation brands while retaining the authenticity of the sharing economy.
Last year we saw over 5,000 bookings on our inventory. Flatbook is the largest manager of Airbnb properties in many of the cities we're in.
Since our service sits on top of booking destinations like Airbnb, HomeAway etc, regulations sit at a level beyond our current involvement. In most cases, regulations only apply if your landlord isn't cool with you subletting. We always advise our customers to make sure of that fact regardless.
Awesome new service guys. I like that you focused a lot on the pain points for the person who is renting. I wish I would leave for more than 3 weeks at a time so I could rent my place through you :) I guess I have to stick with Airbnb.
@sophiemasure Thanks Sophie! We wish we could work with you too, make sure to keep in touch :)
Product Hunt