Zumper Enables Landlords to Bring Better Apartment Listings to Renters

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Name: Zumper

One-Liner Pitch: Zumper is a high-quality apartment listings site without the spam.

Why It's Taking Off: With the launch of mobile app Zumper Pro, landlords can easily manage their listings inside Zumper and on other sites.

It's a mobile-first world. Consumer apps are a dime a dozen these days, but some industries seem to be a step behind — in real estate, Zumper hopes to change that with its first iOS app, Zumper Pro.

Anthemos Georgiades, CEO of Zumper, spoke with Mashable about how landlords and brokers are lacking in intuitive technology, and how his company aims to address the issue.

SEE ALSO: Beyond Craigslist: 10 Sites for Apartment Hunters

"These guys are taking 4-megapixel camera into units to take photos when they have an iPhone in their pocket," he says.

Zumper first launched in beta last year as a web app for finding apartments. The app allows you to search via a map view, by neighborhood, to favorite listings, follow a specific neighborhood's listings feed and contact landlords directly through the interface. The difference is that Zumper never scraped or borrowed data from other sites — all the listings are original. To build the volume of listings needed to make the site useful, Zumper is first focusing on the New York, Chicago and San Francisco markets.

But to truly serve apartment seekers with a variety of listings, Zumper will need to woo apartment managers, landlords and brokers to post listings on the platform directly.

Zumper Pro addresses the needs of landlords. It is a free iOS app (paid features may come later) that allows someone to take photos of a unit with their phone, reorder them, add a location and write copy to go with the listing — all information is automatically saved to the cloud. Listings call also be turned into a HTML flyer and posted on Craigslist (similar to Postlets). The process is much more intuitive than taking photos with a separate camera and uploading them to a laptop via USB. Georgiades calls it "next generation software for landlords."

Of course, the benefits will trickle down to renters.

"For renters we are focused on the most accurate data set in the market

"For renters we are focused on the most accurate data set in the market, and we do this by building our listings bottom up through direct data," says Georgiades. An iOS app for renters is due out this summer.

Since the web app currently serves renters, Georgiades says they've learned a thing or two about how renters search for that perfect apartment. While many people say they prefer a map view of apartment listings, Zumper found that users quickly move off the map and set up alerts for specific searches or follow a specific neighborhood. The neighborhood feed feature is unique to Zumper and particularly useful for both a person who is new to town and someone who needs an apartment but doesn't want to move far. The mobile app Zumper is developing for renters will apply what they've learned about user behavior.

The company raised $1 million seed round from several well-respected investors and Georgiades has a real estate background, so the company is poised to be a real contender in the apartment hunting space.

What's your preferred method for finding a rental? Are you looking for new alternatives? Tell us about your experiences in the comments.

Images courtesy of Flickr, quinn.anya and Zumper