10 Awesome Bits of Trivia about the Freedom of Information Act

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There's a lot of holidays going on this week. There's Pi Day for the science majors, the Ides of March for the liberal arts majors, Purim for the Jewish folks, and of course St. Patrick's Day for Irish (and not-so-Irish) folks.

In the lesser-known holidays category, we've also got True Confessions Day on Tuesday, Awkward Moments Day and Forgive Mom and Dad Day on Friday, and both Swallows Return to San Juan Capistrano Day and National Quilting Day on Saturday.

Jammed in with all of that is the anniversary of 4th US President James Madison, the man largely responsible for drafting the US Constitution on Wednesday the 16th. Of course, calling it "Madison's Birthday" wouldn't be cool, so we call it "Freedom of Information Day."

Freedom of Information is pretty important to us here at RentConfident. In fact, without it and similar laws regarding open access to government records we wouldn't be able to obtain the information that allows us to exist. Therefore, in honor of Freedom of Information Day, here's some things you might not know about the "Act to amend section 3 of the Administrative Procedure Act, chapter 324, of the Act of June 11 1946 (60 Stat. 238), to clarify and protect the right of the public to information, and for other purposes" - known to its friends and family as FOIA. Continue reading 10 Awesome Bits of Trivia about the Freedom of Information Act

Published by

Kay Cleaves

City Renter University: The Best Fictional Choice in Renter Education (Part II)

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Imagine there's a fictional university dedicated to renter education located right here in Chicago. Its name is City Renter University. Within this university, there are many different departments, professors, and courses.

In January, I shared a list of fictional course descriptions offered by the Department of Apartment Hunting (DAH).

Of course, not every student wants to focus on apartment hunting. Some have their eyes on the bigger picture, and know that once you find the apartment you have to actually move into it. Good for them!

For these students (and for all of you out there), I'd like to introduce another department in this college: The Department of Moving and Disagreement (MAD). Their course offerings on the City Renter University website might look something like this:

The Department of Moving and Disagreement

With great history and tradition, The Department of Moving and Disagreement (MAD) welcomes our students. Our program features one of the smallest student-to-furniture ratios in the country. The many opportunities to interact face-to-sweaty-face with our outstanding faculty allows our students to grow as movers and sharpen their skills at arguing about “the best way to get it around that corner.” Below you will find courses offered for First Term 2016.

MAD 102 – Foundations of the Moving Lexicon

This introduction to the language of moving allows students to develop, disseminate, and integrate the concepts of the diverse dialects, speech communities, and guttural sounds of the moving process. Students will learn the cultural contexts in which yelling “Turn it TOWARDS me” actually means “Turn it AWAY from me.”

MAD 105 – Digital Liberty and Setting Things Down

An examination of the conflict between fingers, toes, and the state power of heavy objects that seek to crush and imprison them. In MAD 105, students will analyze the compelling ethical questions behind the individual's surrender to the force of weight and the conditions and circumstances under which not dropping an object may qualify as torture.

MAD 204 – Motivation, Paint Fumes, and the Brain

This course focuses on the analysis of motivated behaviors (e.g. putting that chair in the corner) and the neural and cognitive processes that influence such behavior in a freshly painted apartment. Some field work is necessary. Field discussions may include lack of inhibition, brief mild euphoria, and increased hostility due to headache.

MAD 217 – The Unwilling Helper: Studies in Persuasion

Students will explore the best means to persuade an unwilling individual to participate in the moving process, paying special attention to bribery, shaming, and coercion. Course activities will include critiques of presentation techniques and the study of body language to determine the likely validity or falsity of excuses.

MAD 335 – Patterns and Cultural Identity in Box Labeling

This course reflects upon the consequences of faster and clearer labels on moving society, with an emphasis on the political and economic migration of those boxes marked with contents and destination rooms. Course participants will be required to make and wear their own "content" and "destination" labels for the duration of the term. Students labeled "fragile" may be dropped.

MAD 370 – Not Heavy but Awkward: Dance in Moving Society

Students will research the effect of improvisational and experimental movement as art, exploring themes such as originality, authenticity, and the methods through which different moving societies negotiate the cruelty of narrow stairways.

MAD 398 – Professional Moving Field Experience (12 weeks)

CRU lifting straps are available in the University Bookstore.


Do you know someone who would make a great student at CRU? How about potential instructors? Do you have an idea for a great course of study at CRU? Share it with us in the comments!

RentConfident is a Chicago startup that provides renters with the in-depth information they need to choose safe apartments. Help us reach more renters! Like, Share and Retweet us!

Published by

Jon Hoferle

Don’t Trust This Article. (Or any article about rent rates.)

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Local news site DNAInfo loves to post articles about the rent rates in Chicago. In fact, they've done it three times in the past year, each time using data from an apartment listing site called "Zumper." Across the three articles, the "median rent rate" for a Chicago one bedroom has jumped from $1670 to $1970.

This information is, of course, based only the apartments listed on Zumper, a relative newcomer to the very crowded apartment listing website scene. It's also ridiculously inaccurate. If rents in Chicago go up 5% in a year it's a really big deal. If they had really jumped 18% in 12 months we'd be in a state of emergency.

The most recent article, posted in late January, also included some data from Zillow, which is a step in the right direction.

Even so, every time I see an article like this, I roll my eyes and throw up my hands in frustration. As much as census data is not to be trusted when it comes to rent rates, individual commercial websites are also useless as sources of real statistical data. Today we look at the reasons why. Methodology is at the end of the article.

There's only one site for apartment listings in Chicago.

Here are the global traffic rankings of some apartment listing websites that you might recognize:

49 Craigslist (craigslist.org)
169 Zillow (zillow.com)
530 Realtor.com
3562 Apartments.com
48054 Zumper (zumper.com)
85511 Radpad (onradpad.com)
176803 Domu (domu.com)

Out of all of those sites, only Craigslist advertises other things besides real estate. Realtor.com and Zillow both offer homes for sale as well as rentals. Even so, if you isolate the apartment traffic to each site Craigslist probably still dwarfs all of the others.

For Lincoln Square/Albany Park on the north side, Craigslist had received 722 apartment postings on Saturday. Zumper had 8, Zillow had 15. Realtor.com had 15 in the past week.

For Ashburn on the south side, none of the sites had listings posted on Saturday. From the past 7 days, Craigslist had 49 listings, Zumper had 11, Zillow 23, and Realtor.com had 6.

For River North in downtown Chicago, Craigslist had over 2500 listings from Saturday. Zumper had 61. Zillow had 5. Realtor.com had 15 from the past week.

Craigslist does allow duplicate postings for the same address, while the other sites do not. This means that Craigslist's numbers are not nearly as high as they seem at first glance. However, there were no obvious duplicates among the Ashburn listings. This tells me that even with duplicates removed, Craigslist gets double the listings of the others.

Now, I'm not one to knock a market newcomer. However, when dealing with statistics, sample size is crucial. Zumper's daily listings are few enough that a couple of new high rise clients on the higher end of things could be enough to cause that 18% jump.

Out of these four sites, Craigslist is the only one I would trust to give an accurate, if not perfect, representation of Chicago rents. Unfortunately, that's a problem if we want to get an average, since...

Craigslist does not allow statistical analysis and is not likely to change that stance.

Craigslist has been historically hostile to people and companies who have tried to harvest their data on a large scale - the kind of scale you would need for accurate statistical modeling. They blocked access to Yahoo pipes. They sued Padmapper for scraping their apartment listings.

This approach is understandable. Given the other things besides apartments that are advertised on Craigslist, the ability to statistically parse all of their data would be bad for everyone involved. Yes, data would be nice, but with that would come people scraping names, phone numbers and email addresses on things like personals and pets for sale. I don't blame Craigslist for their stance at all.

However, even if Craigslist were to open its apartment postings for statistical analysis, it wouldn't help because...

No site covers all of Chicago fairly.

Not even Craigslist.

Every time one of these "median rent" news articles comes out, some folks in the comments will complain that they ignore the south side or the west side or some other chunk of the city.

The low number of Ashburn listings on Craigslist is proof positive that some areas of the city don't get equal representation on any commercial rental site. In fact, of all the sites I looked at, none yielded enough ads to give an good, chewy sample size for Ashburn apartments.

There's no "other site" for south side Chicago listings. There are plenty of apartments in that neighborhood. However, residents use other means to find them.

The averages vary depending on which site you use.

A different group of rentals is present on each of the three sites I checked for data. This means that each tells a different story about Chicago rent rates and in many cases their numbers are very far apart.

Site 1 bed 2 bed 3 bed
60625 (Lincoln Square/Albany Park)
Craigslist $1164 $1556 $1929
Zumper $995 $1608 $1975
Zillow $1219 $1603 $1225
Realtor.com No Data $1607 $1955
60654 (River North)
Craigslist $1955 $2889 $4288
Zumper $2335 $3608 $5577
Zillow $2470 $3750 No Data
Realtor.com $2235 $3596 $5410
60652 (Ashburn)
Craigslist $705 $891 $965
Zumper $750 $905 $1050
Zillow $875 $963 $1172
Realtor.com $800 $1400 $1599

Note: the above table should not be used for statistics. In many cases the "averages" were based on only 1-2 listings.

In some cases the averages across sites were pretty similar. 2 beds in particular seem to be quite consistent. In other cases the averages varied by hundreds of dollars. Craigslist had the lowest averages in all but one category, which tells me that the rentals with the lowest prices are posted to Craigslist exclusively. Most importantly, it's very apparent that Zumper is not the best arbiter of rent rates for Chicago 1 bedroom apartments.

But even if every apartment listing was posted to all three sites simultaneously, they still wouldn't nail it because...

A "rent rate" is not a precise number.

When a landlord sets a price for an apartment, it's only rarely an fixed, non-negotiable number. It's a starting point. A suggestion. Something to get the ad to show up in your search results.

The fancy high rises downtown charge different amounts based on how many months you choose to stay. Some landlords will install new appliances or custom paint at higher rates. Still others will list their apartments at two separate price points - one for outside agents and one for in-house staff.

There's also add-ons to consider. In this era of move-in fees instead of security deposits, those fees should really be added on to the rent rate. The same goes for other non-refundable items like pet rent, key fees, parking fees and storage fees.

If you throw Section 8 into the mix with their ability to force a landlord to lower their rent rates to meet the market, pricing gets even more complicated.

But the apartments listed on commercial websites are only part of the story because...

The shadow market is real.

Not every apartment is listed on a commercial website. There's plenty that never get that far. There's plenty that do not involve transactions between strangers.

People rent from family. They get housing in exchange for services rendered. They move within the building. They rent a single room. They sublease. They get pulled off of wait lists. They sell their house and then rent it back from the new owners.

Every single one of those situations is a real rental with a real rent rate. But we'll never know about them outside of the census.

At the end of the day, news articles about median rent rates in any city are fluff pieces. They serve to promote the websites that source the "data" and nothing else. To that end, they work.

Unless the article includes data from 3-4 websites, the census and Section 8 all blended together, it's nothing more than a waste of bandwidth.

Methodology

Site rankings were pulled from SimilarWeb.com.

Prices were based on scrapes of recent apartment listings posted to Craigslist, Zillow, Zumper and Realtor.com. For the first three I was able to use only listings posted within the past 24 hours. For Realtor.com I had to extend that timeframe to 7 days.

Sites that I wanted to include in the price check but could not were Apartments.com, Radpad and Domu. None of them allow consumers to sort their postings by date.

The three zip codes I used were 60625, 60654 and 60652 - all in Chicago.

60625 covers Lincoln Square and Albany Park. Population density is 20k/sq mi, mostly (52%) white. 17.8% are below the poverty line.

60652 is Ashburn on the southwest side. Population density is 8500/sq mi, mostly (50%) black. 13% are below the poverty line.

60654 is River North, close to the Loop. Population density is 26k/sq mi, mostly (77%) white. 8.8% are below the poverty line.

RentConfident is a Chicago startup that provides renters with the in-depth information they need to choose safe apartments. Help us reach more renters! Like, Share and Retweet us!

Published by

Kay Cleaves

Life… in an Apartment (as narrated in the style of Sir David Attenborough) A Nature documentary.

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Editor's Note: This article is written in the style of Sir David Attenborough, a well-known narrator of nature documentaries for the BBC. If you are not familiar with his enormous body of work, you can find some examples on Youtube.

Inside this enchanted multifamily building, life is swirling in a spectacular dance. Despite its calm brick exterior, this building is home to an exciting collection of animals. Between the walls, insects teem, feasting on glue and grease. Majestic birds, descendants of small feathered dinosaurs, make their homes in its eaves. Thousands of miles from the African plains, a feline predator waits for mice or daybreak.

This is a place of wonders. The Chicago Apartment.

Life here has been called nature's secret – for in these rooms, life has evolved to thrive behind locked doors.

Join me... as I explore the world of the extraordinary creatures of the Apartment. Continue reading Life… in an Apartment (as narrated in the style of Sir David Attenborough) A Nature documentary.

Published by

Jon Hoferle

Introducing the Fingerprint Report and Pay-what-you-can Pricing

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Tomorrow (March 1, 2016) we will be launching a new report format, a new price structure and a new look for our website. Unlike many other web-based startups, we do not job out our code to third party web designers. I build our site entirely in house - no collaboration, no support. Today I wanted to share with you a bit about what the new report is and how it developed.

The Concept

When we opened last year we had two report formats - the Signature Report at $65 and the simpler Initial Report at $35. As there is no other company out there doing exactly what we do, setting the price for the Reports was something of a guessing game. However, I knew that the going rate for tenant background checks was in the $25-75 range and used that as a reference point as those costs have traditionally been covered by tenants without much problem.

Given the tight budgets that many renters have to work with and the rising rents in the Chicago area, we were surprised to see that the more expensive Signature Reports were selling a lot better than the cheaper Initial Reports. When I thought it through the reasons for this became apparent. Continue reading Introducing the Fingerprint Report and Pay-what-you-can Pricing

Published by

Kay Cleaves