Fresh from acquiring an accommodations review site RentAdvisor, Apartment List just closed its Series A investment round. The round was led by Matrix Partners and had raised USD15 million in new funding. According to a report by TechCrunch, the new funding would go toward building out its sales, engineering and product teams. Proceeds from the funding round would also reportedly go towards improving the quality and reach of its apartment reviews and profiles.
Apartment List Chief Executive Officer John Kobs had grandious plans for the platform. Kobs intended to develop the service into an end-to-end platform for apartment dwellers, which would span from apartment searches to conduct transactions online including lease agreement and rent payments.
Kobs said, "The lifetime value of a renter at Apartment List is the entire time that they're renting an apartment. Instead of it being four to six weeks, I see it as ten years."
Kobs had plans to make the site more renter-friendly, he told TechCrunch. Kobs wanted to provide a more consumer-friendly service on Apartment List and hopefully reduce an apartment hunter's risks of getting scammed. Once this would be addressed, alongside the streamlining of rent payments services, Kobs envisioned Apartment List to be the frontrunner of all rental sites in the world.
On the other hand, Kobs revealed that Apartment List was also building a team to create relationships with landlords and eventually help the latter put their rented properties on the site. TechCrunch noted that a good relationship with landlords was key to build an ecosystem of cohesive renting.
The current homepage of Apartment List has the first batch of reviews, thanks to its RentAdvisor acquisition. The team at Apartment List was also developing an Android app as 57% of total number of visitors accessed the site through their mobile gadgets. The startup would be launching the app in the next few weeks. Moreover, virtual tours and walkthroughs would be added as visual content for the site next year, said Kobs. Apartment List already has 3D floor plans and high-resolution images of apartments rental places on the site.
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