SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Apartment List, the fastest-growing apartment search engine that is reinventing the rental market on a foundation of trust and transparency, today announced a $15 Million Series A funding round, led by Matrix Partners. The company will use its first round of outside funding to continue its mission of digitizing the entire rental process from start to finish.
"Millions of people want or need to re-locate to new apartments each month and yet before Apartment List there was not a legitimate, comprehensive and reliable solution online," said Dana Stalder, general partner at Matrix Partners and new Apartment List board member. “John and his team have built a service that consumers love and is uniquely positioned to own the rentals market. This is a huge space with demonstrable demand.”
Approximately 100 million people are renters in the United States and the Rentals market failed to experience any major innovations in several years. In just two years since the company launched, Apartment List has curated the largest number of rental listings without scams, with more listings than its competitors in 67 of the top 100 rental marketplaces. This has resulted in more than 1.5 million people visiting Apartment List monthly on a national scale.
The company has gone to great lengths to curate high-quality listings without the scams. By consolidating properties from hundreds of well-known listing services, it delivers a universe of available apartments in one site, saving renters time and money in their search.
“The online and mobile rental market is broken. We’ve worked hard to bring the first real innovation to the rentals market by building out fantastic supply and inventory online, furthering trust and transparency with our customers,” said John Kobs, CEO of Apartment List. “Matrix has a long and storied history of working closely with early-stage companies to help them achieve their true potential. We look forward to working with their team to build out the next phase of Apartment List, establishing the first true marketplace for rentals that serves the best interests of renters and landlords throughout the U.S.”
The Apartment List team includes 55 employees nationwide, with more top-talent hires on the horizon. The company acquired RentAdvisor in October 2013 to create additional transparency into rental process, adding more than 20,000 reviews and ratings to the company’s listings.
Additionally, Apartment List is highly focused on expansion of its mobile services. Apartment List launched its first mobile app four months ago and now mobile devices account for more than 47 percent of the company’s monthly visitors. As Apartment List expands its mobile reach, the company is also looking well into the future to digitize the rental process, bringing to an end to the age-old, non-digital means of signing rental agreements and paying landlords. This process of contacting landlords, signing contracts and paying rent all directly through the mobile app will completely reinvent the rental space, creating more transparency between renters and owners.