Photo courtesy of www.renthop.com
From booking a hotel room to making dinner reservations to finding your next apartment, smartphones have made life easier. A new mobile app from RentHop hopes to continue that trend. Launched this week and available for free download at the iOS App Store, RentHop better connects rental property managers on-the-go with prospective tenants in the New York City area. According to the company’s CEO, the idea for the app came from the online restaurant reservation service OpenTable.
RentHop’s mobile app allows managers to re-post and update listings on RentHop as well as send notes and communicate with renters in real time from their mobile device. Additionally, the app includes a check-in feature which notifies renters that rental property managers are immediately available to show listings and broadcasts their location. Phase two of the app, which will be released in January, will allow consumers to bring a property manager to their location within fifteen minutes just by pushing a button on their smartphone.
As an additional benefit to property managers, listings available for appointments on-demand appear further up in the search results at RentHop’s website. The website also features a live map for prospective tenants that displays where all property managers are checking in so they can immediately reach out to schedule an office visit or set-up a showing rather than playing phone tag or exchanging several e-mails with a manager.
Founded in 2009, RentHop uses technology and data analysis to help individuals looking for an apartment “quickly sift through large pools of inventory to find the most appropriate listings” and display them in search results. The company is funded by Y Combinator and serves New York City, Boston, and Chicago.
