For the last decade at least, Craigslist has been the default place to find an apartment for rent. But let's face it: The text-heavy design, complete lack of consistency with photos and apartment descriptions, and spam listings leave a lot to be desired.
Map-based apartment listing site Zumper thinks it can do better with higher-quality listings straight from landlords and property managers, complete with photos, descriptions, and the occasional floor plan. It's added those listings to a map and slapped some filters on top of the data, hoping to lure apartment hunters away from Craigslist. Since launching its public beta in early September, traffic on the site has been growing, says co-founder Anthemos Georgiades. The company has also appealed to investors: On Thursday Zumper announced it has raised $1 million in seed funding from big-name VCs, including Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock, and NEA.
Zumper offers real-time apartment listings for New York City and San Francisco and has plans to expand into at least three new cities by the beginning of next year. Unlike Craigslist, the company creates relationships with landlords, brokers, and property managers to list their rental properties on the site. That means you won't find spam listings submitted by random people, Georgiades says: "Landlords, property managers, and brokers go through an approval process, so we can verify the people behind the listings. The next step is a verification system so anyone can list their own place."
Every available property is shown on a map with the monthly rent price and is color-coded based on the age of the listing. Pink properties are only a few hours old, while blue listings have been on the site longer than a day. If you click on the price, you can see photos, the address, bedroom and bathroom counts, and how many hours or days the listing has been on Zumper. That way, you can judge whether an apartment is still available before you send out an e-mail asking to check it out. You can also filter the listings by price, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and age of the listing.
Along with the apartments themselves, you can also get good intel on their environs. If you click on a certain neighborhood, outlined on the map in green, you'll get a guide of the area, including shops, restaurants, culture, and weather, plus all of that neighborhood's listings. You can also view that neighborhood's news feed, which refreshes every five minutes, so you can see new listings first. If you find an apartment you like, you can securely communicate with the property owner or manager through Zumper, instead of giving out an e-mail address.
Zumper's not the first site to add listings to a map but is setting itself apart by hunting down its own listings, instead of porting Craigslist data over like PadMapper did. Zumper also has plans for mobile apps, so users can hunt for places on the go. Those curated, higher-quality listings, paired with a helpful map, might give Zumper the ammo it needs to take out Craigslist as the reigning apartment hunting site. We get the feeling no one will miss it.
