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RadPad, an online apartment-listing platform, just raised a $2 million funding round. The new capital raise comes soon after the company declined two acquisition offers and posted 40 percent month-over-month growth.
The company, which was born out of frustration with existing apartment rental services, differentiates itself by requiring at least three good photos from each apartment posting. According to the company, based on this simple premise of providing clear and accurate information RadPad has gained considerable traction. In Los Angeles, RadPad now has more listings than Craigslist and popular local listing service Westside Rentals.
“We want renters to know we are on their side and that’s how we approach every thing we build and what we do,” said Jonathan Eppers, co-founder and CEO. “We based the entire experience around photos. What we’re always trying to do for both customers and landlords is make the listing look better.”
In fact, the service uses backend technology to automatically enhance poor quality images and will optimize for the best performing photos. In an industry known for grainy photos and fraudulent listings, Eppers said better images have gone a long way to manage expectations,
“By the time renters get there it is really just to reaffirm that that photos match,” said Eppers. “We hear from a lot of landlords that renters are less flakey and commit more often.”
Curiously, some 10 percent of the app’s users remain on the service for up to two months, long beyond the typical two weeks span most apartment hunters engage similar services. Eppers speculates such use-cases are purely for browsing apartment images, like a user might look at Pinterest images.
Founded in January 2012, the service is currently free for renters and landlords and has been sustaining itself on $1.5 million in seed funding. The additional $2 million in funding will be used to give the company more runway and to help build out soon to be announced technologies.
Eppers declined to name the companies behind RadPad’s recent acquisition offers but said one of the offers came from a large established player in the real estate space. He believes the offers and churn in real estate indicate a lot of potential opportunity.
“There are a lot of mergers going on in the space. The Trulia and Zillow merger for example,” said Eppers. “We like to remain independent and are very excited about our future.”
