Cost (to the town) for developing that app probably is higher than 10 years of Uber's 20% fees. Cost of maintaining the app could conceivably be higher than the ongoing 20% fee.

Unless the town has a resident programmer who gives his time away for free, like Uber drivers with their cars.

With a "guaranteed source" of ridership, this should be good for the Uber drivers.

Next, they need to unionize to ensure that they are making a living wage after the cost of operating their vehicles.

As it stands, many Uber drivers are giving away the cost of operating their vehicle for free - which is how their cars are so nice compared to typical taxis.

That's the fare charged to the riders, what's the service costing the taxpayers? Especially in smaller towns, buses can be shockingly expensive to operate.

Bus rides cost whatever the city decides they cost. Usually, bus fare is subsidized and the system runs at a loss.

Nah, just make flamingo nesting grounds with it. Environmentally friendly, if you're a flamingo.

These things vary by locality, usually by city and county, there are many parts of Florida where you can rent short term without these taxes.

Greater Houston, nonesuch tax, but heavy on the unified front of professional agents "making their own laws" by cornering the market.

Family of 3 with #4 on the way in 60 days, moving into a new town for a new job - renting was virtually essential to close in time to have stable shelter for the new baby. We bought a house within 6 months, and moved into it after 3 more, as most people do in that market, which is a big part of why the real-estate agents all advise their landlords to NEVER rent for less than a 12 month term - it's collusion and price fixing, and as Lucius Malfoy says: "Why don't you Prove it?" A landlord who would have given me a contract with an early out clause would have been easily worth a 10% per month premium on the rent, but... not an option, more profitable to hold out for all 12 months of rent and work the market to get new tenants in as quickly as possible after the lease is up.

Protest, get the other neighbors to protest, usually all it takes is one resident to stand up and say "no" and the elected representatives will stand up for the residents that elected them.

Now, if your precinct is stupid enough to vote in a bought and paid for candidate, then I suppose you're getting what you deserve when his owners come and destroy your park.

So.... this already goes on, Landlords "fish" their properties on the market when tenants move out early, trying to look for higher bidders. If a service like Rentberry was widely adopted, the landlords could also be persuaded to take lower rent bids and rent more often instead of holding out for higher prices. The real win here is for landlords who don't need the "management services" of real-estate companies, so they can get market exposure without giving a big slice to agents.

Freedom of information is good, the guy running Rentberry may be a sensationalist jerk, but the essential concept of an open marketplace for rental price negotiation should serve both sides of the rental agreement. When I rented in Houston, I would have paid an extra 10% to a landlord who would give me a "tenant friendly lease," but there simply were nonesuch on the market, they were all locked up in these super-landlord slanted agreements perpetuated by the real-estate companies. An open marketplace could have made that more available.

If DT can effectively end fire ants, I will personally kiss the ring.

It was the sound of Trillions of Trillions of voices screaming out in agony, then suddenly silenced.

Plenty of brands, any of them made with decent quality? If so, keep watching that brand for the next few years and watch the cost of production drop as the supplier relationship matures. It's quite obvious how it drops, thinner cloth, thinner more widely spaced stitching, etc.

I work with a group of people who are all "smart enough" to automate most of their work, but they don't do it. Instead, they procrastinate, drag things out, and then when the deadline approaches, it's "too late" to employ automated techniques and they just hand-craft a solution and ship it. Someday, the company will lose out to competitors who do automate their work more effectively, but that will take decades before the competition can both manufacture a better, cheaper product and shift the customer base to start buying it instead of ours (10-20 year replacement cycle, strong brand loyalty, low price sensitivity in the market, etc.)

They only sprout in pairs with Walgreens. It's a tossup which one pops first, but once the first one has waited until the traffic analysis is certain enough to fund a loan it is virtually certain to demonstrate from parking lot traffic studies that a 2nd drug store in the same location could also be profitable.

In Florida, the small towns about an hour away from the coast are the particular victims of this. They've got a WalMart, a couple of grocery stores, a couple of drug stores, a Dollar General or two, and everything in the WalMart is priced to compete with CVS or Walgreens.

Drive an hour into the "big town" on the coast and then WalMart is priced to compete with Target, et.al. - but according to the IRS, that 100 mile round trip costs you $55, so you'd better need a lot of stuff if you're going to be making the trip to save money.