A startup platform that provides online apartment listings for renters and property management services for multifamily landlords announced it has raised more than $22 million in new funding a year after its revenues nearly doubled.
Wisconsin-based company Rentable confirmed to The Real Deal that the new Series B funding comes from Susquehanna Growth Equity, 4490 Ventures and Flyover Capital.
The startup is expected to compete for the business of smaller landlords who might not be able to afford the services of some of Rentable’s pricier competitors. It specializes in tools that assist with listing, leasing and property management.
“The old, big players can’t really change their ways, and they’ve created an environment where companies like Rentable have big room to improve and grow,” Josh Elser, Susquehanna Growth Equity’s managing director, told The Real Deal.
The startup was founded in 2013. It went by the name Abodo before rebranding as Rentable in December.
Since its inception, the company had raised millions of dollars in previous rounds of funding. The company declined to provide its latest valuation to the real estate publication, but said it’s now “significantly” higher than it was during the last round of funding.
The company said it saw a boom in revenues during the pandemic. It plans to use the new funding to double its staff over the next year, The Real Deal reports.
Rentable CEO Alec Slocum told the publication he plans to take tools that have worked in other e-commerce industries and apply them to multifamily listings and property management.
Alongside a variety of traditional listing tools, the company has dabbled in human-bot hybrid assistants that help renters locate a group of relevant properties. The service made use of human experts and artificial intelligence technology.
“To really change the search experience for renters, you can’t just add another filter and create a new screen,” Slocum said in the interview. “You need to unlock new content, new technology that really solves the friction points that renters experience.”
The company also provides regular, data-based reports on the state of the U.S. rental market.