a day ago
- Business
- Otago Daily Times
Rental frustrations drive tenant match-making app
Flatly co-founder Quinn McCarthy. PHOTO: SUPPLIED
Three friends are setting out to make flat-finding and flatmate- or tenant-finding a much easier experience.
Christchurch-based Quinn McCarthy, who lived in Queenstown for three years till his rental was put on Airbnb and he couldn't find another, has co-created a free house-sharing app, myflatly — the website's and the Instagram account's @myflatly
McCarthy's journey originated when he tried to find new flatmates through Facebook and was overwhelmed by hundreds of desperate flat-hunters at the same time as he was busy at work.
He says Flatly was born out of this frustration and is "aiming to revolutionise the long-term rental market".
Starting up in Queenstown and Christchurch, it's designed for both people looking for a rental and for existing tenants and landlords looking to fill a room or rooms.
"The housing conversation is often about affordability and availability, but the flatmate search itself is chaotic, overwhelming and unregulated," says McCarthy, who's started Flatly with Christchurch-based Tawanda Sunguni and UK-based Veerain Patel.
"Our biggest hope is we can start targeting some of those people who are sitting on the fence with a room; they might be on a mortgage or something, but listing on Facebook is just too much of an effort, right?
"They don't want to deal with 200 people."
McCarthy says they want to build up their house-sharing solution with extra information, like, for example, a guide on average rentals.
His particular gripe is landlords/head tenants charging, say, $200 extra for a couple as against an individual — "that's just straight price-scalping".
As for his own situation, "I wouldn't be opposed to moving back down [to Queenstown] if all the stars aligned".
"It's an ironic thing because I wouldn't have done this if I didn't have to leave."
