I’m investing in the real estate company I wish someone built years ago
Every college student has a horror story from their rental experiences. Either they paid too much, moved into a defective house or ended up next to the worst neighbors of all time. It doesn’t matter what school you go to — the process of finding, vetting and securing housing on college campuses is horrible.
That is, until now. I’ve finally found a company that is solving the problem in an authentic, sustainable way. LoftSmart, a data-driven marketplace empowering college students to discover and lease local rentals, was founded in the fall of 2015 by Sam Bernstein and Sundeep Kumar.
What started as a “Yelp for real estate” has quickly spread to 10 major college markets, achieved deep penetration in each market and now drives more than 20X the reviews of Yelp. This traction alone would be impressive, but LoftSmart has even larger ambition.
The team is in the process of launching the market’s first end-to-end, in-platform leasing product. This means that students can easily search, vet and sign their leases without leaving their dorm. The product’s secret sauce is that LoftSmart has intelligently integrated the application, credit/criminal screening, online leasing, guarantor automation, and payment processes. Truly a 10X better consumer product than currently available.
That said, what I’m most excited about isn’t the consumer product, but rather the deep integrations with property managers. LoftSmart now seamlessly integrates into their existing management software and enables property managers to identify and convert tenants at a fraction of the traditional cost. This changes the way that property managers market, analyze and close leases in the college rental market.
I’m not the only one who noticed. The company has developed partnerships with some of the country’s largest student housing developers / property mangers, along with securing investments from elite real estate investors like Corigin Ventures, Expansion Venture Capital, Metaprop NYC, Jeffrey Berman of Camber Creek Partners and Jaffray Woodriff.
The LoftSmart team has incredibly difficult, ambitious goals — I’m excited that they’re allowing us to be a small part of their journey.
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