Quick Pitch: The site collects more information than other rental sites to make the rental process smoother for tenants and managers.
Genius Idea: Renters can use the site to collect every little detail about the apartment they're interesting in and not waste time; managers can verify renters can afford the apartment before they tour it.
One third of the world are renters, says Apartable COO and co-founder Matthew "Mati" Bortnick. A property manager himself, Bortnick said the process of finding and renting an apartment is time consuming and inefficient for both renters and owners.
Apartable is an online platform that simplifies the rental process. The site is marketed toward anyone involved in the rental market: brokers, renters, apartment building owners and managers. Since the site collects information about each member, it can save time and money while finding renters the perfect place and managers a suitable renter.
Throughout the world, the rental market is tricky, he said, "with the U.S. being a pretty efficient system comparatively, if you can imagine that."
"The current sites are full of spam, fake apartments and real apartments with little to no information," he said.
From a property manager's perspective, Bortnick said potential renters call and ask the same questions over and over. They might even tour the apartment, but many can't afford it, he said. He recognizes the rental process is difficult from the tenant side, too.
Apartable requires renters and managers to provide more information on the site in order to eliminate properties or tenants that wouldn't work. Each apartment listed on the site will show potential renters where the apartment is located in a particular building (exact unit and floor). For property managers, the site ensures applicants have the required credit scores and incomes to afford to rent the apartment.
"Apartable basically acts as a personal assistant in the finding and management of your search, something you pay a broker a lot of money to do for you and usually not so well," he said. "Our matching mechanism is super intuitive, allowing apartments to find you, as opposed to the other way around — the way everyone dreams of the process working."
Using their direct relationships with management companies, brokerages and private owners, the team at Apartable is able to provide all of the actual rental costs upfront to renters through the site. Costs such as security deposits, fees, utilities, etc. are listed with each apartment. Questions that a renter would typically ask are already answered on the apartment listing. The site does this by asking renters their salaries and to self-report their credit score. For renters, the site has 90 apartment amenities to choose from (washer and dryer in unit, lots of sunlight, gas stove, etc.).
Bortnick said that the site's search engine is so spot-on a renter can look for something as specific as "two bedroom with lots of light with parquet floors in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan, available from Sept. 1, 2012 that has total move in costs of less than $10,000 with monthlies not exceeding $4,500." And because Apartable is so connected to the property owners and building managers, if you see an apartment you like that is currently rented the site also shows you when that tenant's lease is up and provides contact information to the building manager.
"Imagine that each apartment has a Facebook profile that exists forever," he said.
They're launching the site in the U.S. first where there are "38 million renters under the age of 30, most of whom are using the Internet as their first place to find a place."
The site if free for everyone. Users can sign-in with their Facebook account, email address and in the coming days, using their LinkedIn or Google+ account.
Based in New York, Apartable was founded by Bortnick and CEO Avishai Weiss.
Apartable is currently available in New York, Chicago, Boston and a number of smaller markets. The site was launched in beta in mid-May this year. Currently, between 1,500 and 2,000 new apartments are added to the site's inventory daily, which already hovers around 100,000 apartments. In the coming months the team at Apartable plans to make the site available in all major U.S. and Canadian cities.
Would you use Apartable for your rental needs? Tell us in the comments.
Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, http://www.istockphoto.com/user_view.php?id=328828?
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