SOMERVILLE, Mass., April 3rd, 2009 – In February of 2003, Ishay Grinberg founded GrandCentralApartments.com, an online apartment referral service, in the basement of his in-laws' house with his wife designing the web site. Six years and 20,000 customers later, GrandCentralApartments.com has unleashed, Re-branded and launched a new site as a first step in a planned expansion www.RentalBeast.com
Grinberg, an Israeli entrepreneur, thought of the idea while working for a similar company in New York. Realizing that no such service yet existed in the Boston market, Grinberg scraped together some cash and set out to meet the demands of apartment-hunting college students and young professionals who wanted to increase their choices while saving time and money. RentalBeast.com utilizes technology and professional working relationships with apartment owners to accomplish exactly these goals for their clients. RentalBeast's database is the biggest and most comprehensive in MA it includes almost 600 management companies and over 50,000 private owners.
Rental Beast advantage over the competition is that it provides renters with direct access to over 90% of the MA rental market directly through owners and property managers and saves them the costly broker's fees. Each listing is validated, so relying on the information negates the need to spend hours scouring watered down online lists. (Craigslist.org...) We get exact apartment number, address and the phone number to contact. We back up our data with live customer support to clients that are looking for more "hand holding" with each aspect of their search.
Rental Beast offers free advertising for landlords and property managers small or large and directly connects them with renters. Given the membership structure users of Rental Beast tend to be serious renters that are financially stable.
Rental Beast has technology in place to monetize listings any which way is easiest for each specific property, from setting up a data feed such as XML or API to obtaining the listings the old fashion way through email, fax or phone. We convert the listings to our format and stay on top of updating them
As part of a small Angel Round lead by real estate heavy weight Eric Silverman of Eastham capital and In an effort to meet the rising demand for rentals in the wake of the housing bubble burst, Rental Beast is planning an expansion into 25 other markets including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and Houston. The plan is to be in four to eight markets in the next three to five years.