faisalkhalid80

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.

www.getbits.app

yes, and no (cash back).

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.

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.

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.

The analysis is just for London

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.

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.

Interesting. What do you mean by self managed version? (Founder here)

Founder here. Just wanted to say I hear you and the other comments below echo'ing your feedback and am going to get on it!

Hi, founder here. Feedback noted and I'll try to explain the concept a bit better. In London, which is where I am, if you rent a flat as a company - which a lot of international companies do, for their employees - you get treated really well by letting agents + landlords. As a corporate renter you generally don't have to pay a security deposit; you get favourable contractual terms; and you only need to provide your financial and other documents once. All in all it's much easier and better to rent as a corporate vs renting as an individual. So there is an arbitrage opportunity. We enable individuals to capture this arbitrage opportunity. We provide the 'company' which rents the flat - whichever flat you want - for you.

Thanks, this is very useful feedback. Will work on it.

Had to start somewhere and given the time sensitive nature of the flat search process it felt like mobile was something we really couldn't live/launch without

done

Its much easier than going to a branch. No one goes to branches any more because its such a waste of time.

It's only live for London, UK right now. But this needs to be clearer I think.

this is excellent feedback, and is a great articulation of what i have been feeling, but perhaps lacking confidence to say to myself. thank you, you have probably saved me a month of useless development through this.

Good point. I will clarify on the website, its for London only right now.

absolutely, once the comments are over in a day or two, i will aggregate all the feedback, sit with the team and prioritise which ones to do..

Thanks for the feedback. The main reason to use us is.. 1. its easier to use. you mention google maps - try using it on mobile, when you need to decide in 2 seconds. doesn't work, too much noise. you see 8 results because these are top ranked, we don't show you everything. if thats what you want (everything) then its google. 2. aggregation. unlike google, which you mentioned, we show you content from numerous different sources. when i am picking a place i want to know: is it michelin rated? zagat rated? timeout top100? what % score did it have on zomato? did any of the major newspapers write up on it? what do ppl say about it on twitter? what are recent reviews like? these are all things we have, in one place. the use case here is mobile entirely. mb we should just get rid of the desktop site to clarify that and add a mobile app..

Thank you, I see your point..

1. usability - on mobile, its just easier than using Google, Yelp, Zomato or anyone else. less noise. 2. aggregation - we pull data from many different APIs so you have all the info you need to make a decision in one place (Telegraph news articles, Twitter feed, Uber cost, Google and Zomato reviews, Google search results, Zagat status, Michelin status etc...)

thank you.

Hi Colin - I have read the comments on that link several times, and they were very helpful. I have tried to incorporate them.

thank you, noted for the future. my mistake here.