Yes, moving is a pain. But for apartment complexes, there is a high cost associated with every move-out.
Property and maintenance managers have to organize vendor relationships with painters, cleaners, professional resurface contractors, and other maintenance workers as part of turning over every apartment.
“For apartments, it’s really a mission-critical process,” co-founder Jonathan Kite told Hypepotamus. “On an annual basis, apartments will turn on average somewhere between 50-55% of their units. So if you take just an average-sized apartment community of around 200 units, that’s over 100 unit turns.”
The idea for Rent Ready came from co-founder Ryan McMillan’s previous work in the multi-family space, where he saw the challenges associated with making an apartment move-in ready.
Kite, who worked at Microsoft prior to coming back to his hometown of Charlotte to start Rent Ready, said the platform is designed as a technology-driven marketplace to help apartment complexes “turn” vacant units over for incoming tenants.
Alongside Kite and McMillan, Rent Ready’s third co-founder is Will Brugh, who brings his background in investment banking and private equity to the startup.
The platform connects pre-vetted professionals to apartment complexes and their staff members. “For these service providers, the benefit of working with Rent Ready is that they’re experts in their skillsets…they don’t necessarily have the business acumen to go out and sell their services directly to apartment communities. We handle all of that,” added Kite.
From its Charlotte headquarters, the team has expanded to serve apartment communities in Raleigh and Atlanta.
And the team has also attracted the attention of several Southeast-based investors, as they announced this week the close of their $10 million Series A.
The round was led by Virginia-based Grotech, with North Carolina-based CreativeCo Capital and six other institutional investors. “We were very intentional about who we wanted to partner with through this investment,” said Kite.
The team is currently 31 people strong, and Kite said the team plans to use the Series A funding to not only improve their technology but also to bulk up hiring with the addition of around 20 people in the next year.
