Renting By Room - Matching Roommates for Large House 125% rent

[Natalie Schanne]

I am working on building a platform for matching (working professional responsible) roommates to each other to rent whole houses or larger apartments. Example benefit: $3500/mo long term for a 6 BR 3 BA furnished house where the same house unfurnished is offered for rent for $2400/mo on same street. 

1. What platforms already do this? 2. Do you think the market is served well enough by Trulia-Hotpads/Facebook Marketplace/Roomster/Craigslist/Community Boards? (Some programs like Nesterly, Podshare, Upstart are city centric). Airbnb is good for 2-4 month interns.

3. What is this worth to you if your apartment or house could get rented at top of market 30 days faster? (What would you pay? 1/2 months rent every year? 10% of rent? $100/mo?)

4. For a 4 Bedroom, how do 4 single unrelated occupants compare to a family in your opinion? What's the concern (interpersonal drama? What else?)? 

5. Why don't property management companies or apartments do this matching internally? Or do they? Do you think there's an opportunity to provide an add-on personality matching service for cozy or apartments com? 

I noticed that many apartment buildings or property management companies won't try to provide any matching service if you say hey I want to live here but I don't want to rent this 2/2 alone (so cost per person is like $900 vs $1400 for 1/1). -- ALL this coming from the perspective of - as a homeowner in a job-dense area, I can easily get 30-50 single roommate inquiries in a month for a room in my house where price is $700/mo vs a 1 BR apt which might be $1400/mo before utilities. I'm assuming this means there's unmet demand and also potentially matches between people reaching out to me but not meeting my criteria. My platform will evolve to be similar to a dating app like OKCUPID where you answer questions about yourself and choose what answers you want to see from the other person and it ranks you as % friend(agree) / % disagree (compatibility). I am also passionate about doing this because it can improve local housing stock (better maintained), decrease individual living expenses, decrease loneliness, etc. This is a derivative of house hacking and house sharing and student housing.

6. What student housing matching programs are you aware of? Can working professionals rent in the same space? Would that be good or not?

7. WHO ELSE LIKES THIS HOUSE SHARING STUFF THAT I SHOULD TALK TO? Let's chat! Thanks!