Lee Lin

Two Sigma Ventures to Grand Central Tech

Last time we discussed the very early days. From mid-2008 to 2010, RentHop used co-founder Lawrence Zhou's apartment to write code on nights and weekends, while the founders held day jobs at Traxis Partners, D. E. Shaw & Co.,...

RentHop BitCoin Appreciation Exceeds Boston and Chicago Profits

In December 2013, RentHop.com began accepting BitCoin as a form of payment for landlords and real estate brokers to advertise apartment listings. The company initially offered a 60% discount off the prevailing USD to BTC exchange rate to encourage...

RentHop Office Spaces: The Early Years

Our original office was Lawrence's apartment on West 43rd Street and 9th Avenue. This was back in summer 2008 - Lehman Brothers was still around, I was still a quant at D. E. Shaw & Co. by day, and...

Rental Listings – Feeds, Syndication, Aggregation

Lawrence made a bold prediction 10 years ago, back in the Wild West days of online apartment marketplaces and listing portals. He said in the future, all that would be left are syndication websites and aggregation websites (alongside...

Bad Brokers: Charge Fine or Ban Account?

Our team frequently discusses how to best handle compliance measures related to inaccurate advertising. After posting a fake or misleading listing, our algorithms and support staff catch or flag the incorrect advertisement. Our Compliance Team corresponds...

Craig Releases New App!

Speak of the devil, we just mentioned the former massive network effects from old sites, in particular the NYC loved and hated Craigslist. Researches and professors at the Harvard Business School have studied the phenomenon at length - or...

MMT: Modern Monetary Theory, or Magical Mortgage Tease?

For almost 10 years now, experts everywhere have called for rising mortgage rates. Shortly after the financial crisis, everyone everywhere felt bad about buying anything. But as we bounced from the March 2009 lows, slowly the financial gears began...

Craigslist, Freshness, Bait and Switch Problems

When Lawrence and I gave our original Demo Day pitch in the Summer 2009 Y Combinator batch, we cited Craigslist as a large part of the NYC apartment finder problem. Back then, you could not sort by price, location,...

Discount Brokers: Avoiding Adverse Selection Problems

Yesterday we discussed one of the original discount real estate brokerage businesses from the Dot Com 1.0 Bubble. To be fair, the founders probably came out well - a success story from a Y Combinator definition, because the...

ZipRealty: Early Pioneer turned Zombie Company?

Does anyone remember ZipRealty? Back in the Dotcom 1.0 era, they were among the first widespread discount real estate brokerage companies with a reasonably strong presence in the west coast. I have fond memories of using their saved search...

About Me

Lee is a data geek from MIT who spent years at quantitative hedge funds cranking out models to explain and predict financial markets. Real estate has always been a big part of Lee's life. He grew up helping out at his parents' Jersey Shore motels, became a landlord his first year out of college, analyzed mortgages on a fixed-income trading desk, and acquired a New York real estate license. At RentHop, he combines his nerd talents and real estate knowledge to constantly tweak the secret HopScore. He currently lives near Bryant Park and his favorite restaurant was Cafe Zaiya (now known as Tomiz).

Latest News

Manhattan Listings Under $2,600 in November 2024

Renters know that Manhattan is expensive. The median price for an apartment in the borough decreased to $4,500 this...