ALAT.

Bro, we need Glassdoor for renting...
- I'll build it, just as soon as you figure out how it gets paid for.
  
  Get paid by landlords to remove negative reviews, like yelp. Offer to show all reviews, even removed ones, to renters that pay for the premium service.
  Ew, I feel gross after coming up with that idea.
  
  shake down bad landlords to delete bad reviews.
  charge landlords for priority in search results.
  sell searcher info as marketing data.
  sell search trends as financial early indicators to hedge funds.
  expand to HOA reviews for neighborhoods.
  
  Real estate advertising, surely?
  
  Nonprofit ... crowd funded... build it and all you need afterward are paying for servers. Then you're just doing donations like Wikipedia. How much would would it cost to maintain such servers? Seems fundable by a wealthy liberal.
- For apartment complexes there's yelp/Google maps reviews.
  
  I just left a building with 4.5 stars on Google that was an absolute horrific nightmare. Somehow they had gamed the system so that all the recent very negative reviews got mostly taken down or hidden. Do NOT trust Google reviews if you have any inkling the place is sketchy. (I did but the reviews and price were good)
  
  Those are shit though, on average. Only the very upset respond. You're going to have to figure out a way to make the satisfied show up.
- Something like this?
  https://www.ratemylandlord.com/landlords/

References for renting? What sort of dystopia is that? I've never heard of that concept, luckily.
- It's common in Germany to get a "reference" from your current landlord that basically just says "paid rent on time and didn't set anything on fire".
  
  Huh. Here we have registries for people who habitually don't pay on time, with a cooldown once they're caught up. If you're not in the registry it's assumed that you're good.
  
  See, that seems reasonable.
  It doesn't say any more than it has to.
  
  It is? I'm german and I've rented my entire life and never got anything like it nor needed anything like it to rent.
- What country are you in? I thought landlord reference is the norm.
  
  not a thing i've ever heard of in sweden, either apartments are just expensive or you need to sign up for a waiting list and maintain your spot for like 7 years until you have the queue points needed for the apartment you want to rent
  
  Never heard about it in Norway
  
  I'm a Swede living in Denmark. Not a thing in Scandinavia, apparently.
  
  Never heard of it in Croatia.
  
  Not here (Switzerland) either.
  
  not in finland at least. never heard of that stuff
  
  One apartment I lived in was rented out by a private landlord, and there we had the option to write a personal letter/application which would allow us to skip the queue if we matched what they were looking for. We had just become a family of three and they wanted more families with children so we were approved. That was completely voluntary though. In honesty, I think it's kind of weird that we could jump the queue but we were no longer allowed to live in my student apartment so we jumped on it.
  
  Columbus Ohio, Louisville Ky, and Deerfield Beach Fl lol
  
  I’ve definitely never heard of it in Uranus.
- I'm having to do that now. Three years prior renting needs to be accounted for. I left on very bad terms with my previous landlord but I had to give the information over because it showed up on my history check and they refused to let my application be complete without it. So we'll see wtf is gonna happen...
  
  That's sad. There could be so many reasons for disagreements. As long as you paid you shouldn't be forced to do this. Best of luck.
  
  I had a disagreement with my previous landlord. He included power in the rent (not uncommon here) and I have a home lab.
  He was not happy with the electrical bill and accused me of mining Bitcoin.
  Sir, this hardware is from 2010, and couldn't possibly mine a single Bitcoin in the time it has remaining to run before it dies.
  He threatened to evict me, I took his eviction threat documentation to a lawyer who basically told me that "this is not sufficient grounds to evict" (more or less he just laughed at how dumb it was), and I promptly ignored it. Moved out when my lease was up. There were a ton of other problems I won't get into. When he showed it to new potential renters some showed up before the agent who was showing the place and we gave them a warning about the landlord. I'm sure someone rented it eventually, but hopefully we saved a couple of people from going through all that.

Wait, you only have to give a reference for a place to rent? Here in Ireland (Dublin) you need a scan of your passport, government id, work reference, housing reference, and at least bank statements from the last three months.
- Depends on the market. Like New York City is competitive, I think they demand references because they have plenty of options for tenants. Other places maybe not so much. Whatever people can get away with they will do.
- What the actual fuck? You renting a basement apartment or applying for a mortgage?
  
  It's basically the same process. The ideal tenant is someone that can't afford a mortgage by the slimmest of margins.
  
  Room or studio apartment.
  https://www.daft.ie/for-rent/studio-apartment-1-dublin-20-dublin-20/5704336
  "Verifiable reference’s essential Verifiable affordability essential"
  The passport, government id, and work reference are all to make sure you can "afford" to live there.
- I'm going through the process right now in Kansas City Missouri and it seems like it varies from place to place. Leasing agencies seem to be the worst. One of these required everything you mention above except the passport scan, and it was 1.5 months of paycheck stubs from your employer.

Some landlords will give good recommendations for shitty tenants, just so they can get rid of them.
- One guy I bothered every day about his other tenant stomping across my ceiling. That landlord gave me a fantastic recommendation because he was tired of having to do any effort whatsoever instead of just receiving money for doing nothing.
  I saw that tenant as I was moving out, "I don't understand the problem, I always wore my indoor boots?" Fuck apartments lol.
  
  Carpets help
- Can confirm, had a friend rent a room in a house I was staying in (privately rented from the owner) after months of issues, he was given a glowing referee from myself and the owner, and swiftly ejected from the house. Guarantee it got him out the door a shitload quicker.

Catch 22 for everyone trying to move out of their parent's home when they specifically state the references can't be family.
- lie through your teeth, the landlord won't hesitate to blatantly lie so neither should you.
  oh no no mr landlord sir, this isn't my dad, this is my "previous landlord"!
- just ask a friend and lie

Life hack: lie, steal and manipulate. Or be a honest homeless person. It's definitely not going to bother me.
- J Roc says Photoshop your pay stubs and get a friend to give you references
  
  Just stay at a Holiday Inn Express and bypass the whole system.

It is an asymmetric relationship. The landlord only cares if a tenant can be trusted to pay rent and not trash the place. On the other hand, the tenant is getting a service (shelter and upkeep) from the landlord.
Like other service providers, an aggregate rating is probably more appropriate. Some people are fine as long as they have a roof and indoor plumbing while others rate 1-star if the water takes a minute to warm up. Some tenants care about kitchen appliances while others care about an updated bathroom. Some like to be woken up by the first rays of sun while others want a dark room to sleep in. It is important for tenants to both get a good aggregate of a landlord's quality but also understand if the landlord's faults are ones that they care about.
- Being a landlord is morally wrong. Shelter is a human right, not a service. The service that they provide is not calling the cops to evict you so long as you pay them. They don't otherwise provide you with anything.
  
  So, grocery stores are morally wrong? I mean, food is a human right, isn't it? What about hotels?
  Providing a necessary service in exchange for money isn't morally wrong.
  Not everyone wants to own property. It's a huge financial liability, and a pain in the ass, tbh. I actually know people who sold their homes and moved into apartments because they were sick of the time and money required to upkeep a house.
  While there are absolutely landlords who are immoral, especially corporate landlords, saying that being a landlord is inherently immoral is just incorrect.
  
  Oh my sweet summer child.
  We'd all love to live in a socialist utopia where a house to live in is the right of all citizens, but sadly that's just not a reality here on planet earth.
  "Shelter" may be a right, as in if you're destitute you'll get food and something to keep the rain off, but a nice house to live in is not a right.
  Ultimately landlords are providing capital, which you need to pay for a nice house. Providing said capital is not in itself immoral.
  
  I agree with you by principle but there are those who have no interest in ever having a house of their own, either by personal or professional reasons.
  Maintaining a house entails expenses, from current maintenance, to taxes and the eventual full overhaul because someone decided to trash the place.
  I don't want to see people exploited to have a roof over their head and I'm a hairs width away from starting to actively trolling stupid people that think their busted places are gold plated to ask fortunes. But I don't want to see people be deprived of what is theirs and/or see it trashed by others that consider because they are there just for a limited time frame any concern for consequences is out the window.
  Where are you writing from? Tenants have pretty strong protections where I live and an eviction is not a trivial matter here. And if people actually knew how to read, the law is pretty explicit on what is licit, both for tenants and owners (the word "landlord" sounds too much like feudalism to me to use it). Rent prices are high here but a poorly kept place can backfire so badly to the owners that they can see the rent not being paid in place of having work done on the house by the tenants.

Same with getting a job.
- I was thinking the same. Let me interview non-management members of the team to see what working there is really like.

Oh no it’s worse than that. I have mandatory binding arbitration so I don’t really have rights. Mind you that’s after the application fees and paying for my own background check, commonly used to strong-arm you into accepting horrible terms.
It’s that or be homeless.
- naybe its time to buy abandoned malls and convert them to dormitories with shared kitchens
  
  You know, malls were initially envisioned as fully indoor planned communities. It didn't survive long, but it was a way better concept

https://www.shitrentals.org/review/review-a-shit-rental
Check this out. Power to the people.
- Cool idea, if you're in Australia or New Zealand go complain about your shit landlord!

The gallows and guillotine have a nice easy solution for all that bullshit.

I think you're on to something...

How is this weird, whoever has the power in a transaction is able to make their demands. Goes for anything that involves an exchange. Labour, housing, goods. This isn't insightful.
- It's sarcasm.
  
  I don't think that really addresses the comment you're responding to