Juiced up over the Boston rental scene
Some smart money is betting the surge of interest in the rental lifestyle may be more than a passing fancy.
Lexington-based Highland Capital Partners recently plunked down $6.2 million to help fuel the expansion RentJuice, a relatively new online platform aimed at agents, renters and landlords.
Now the San Francisco startup – founded by a recent Harvard Business School grad who did his field research talking to brokers on Newbury Street – is buying a beachhead in Boston’s thriving rental market.
RentJuice this morning announced its acquisition of smaller Boston-based competitor Kahoots, a move that will give the West Coast startup its first office in the area. It is also dropping prices in a bid to bring in more customers.
Of course, RentJuice is just one of a number of online players looking to leverage the growing interest in rentals.
The theory, crudely put, is that a more footloose and mobile Gen Y generation will choose to rent rather than buy for many years to come. The debacle in the home sales market, or so the thinking goes, will make those youngsters think twice before they buy.
Of course, waiting to buy is hardly new. I am one of those supposedly house crazy Gen Xers. I rented through my twenties and never even considered the idea of buying a home until that distant day when I got married and started a family.
That day arrived when I was 32 – I bought my Natick fixer-upper a few years later.
Anyway, the founder of RentJuice, David Vivero, began researching his new venture while at Harvard Business School, interviewing brokers along Newbury Street and in rental heavy neighborhoods like Brighton.
To get an idea of how fast this has all taken shape, Vivero just graduated in 2008.
He then headed west to the Silicon Valley to get the money needed to get RentJuice off the ground, picking up more financial momentum last month, when Highland wrote its big check.
For its part, RentJuice bills itself as a one-stop solution for busy agents, handling the paperwork, lead generation, credit checks and ad placement that can chew up valuable face-time. With a click, an agent can place an ad on 30 consumer websites, including Zillow and Trulia.
On paper, the rental market, especially in a market like Boston overrun with students and recent grads in their 20s, would seem to have great untapped potential.
The rumpled agent showing apartments in Brighton or Quincy to recent grads in their 20s always seemed to me to be the poor stepchild of the carefully manicured suburban agent.
It’s a sector of the real estate industry that could use a little professionalization, whether or not this becomes the era of the renter.
Are RentJuice and new wave of online startups aimed at the rental market onto something here? What’s your take?
