Show HN: Our non-sexy start-up that's growing 10% a week | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Our non-sexy start-up that's growing 10% a week

openrent.co.uk

44 pointsdazbradbury21 comments

Hey HN! Thanks for the upvotes.

I just wanted to share the fact we've been growing at over 10% a week for a while now!

All our listings are created directly by landlords, and our aim is to slowly try and improve the rental market across the UK.

Any questions - fire away!

I'm curious what the competition is like in the space of the UK rental market. Craiglist? etc.

Why do you think you are growing so rapidly?

We're offering something to landlords that isn't currently available in the UK for a reasonable price. We do most of what an agent does, but our costs are minimal because we've automated as much as possible.

Our growth appears to be coming through helping on rental communities that already exist on-line, and being recommended by a lot of their users, as well as our own users being incentivised to share. (You get free listings that way).

Hopefully it will continue, as our aim ultimately is to what letting agents haven't been able to, reduce costs, streamline the process, and create a safe rental community.

That's awesome - congrats guys from a fellow Londoner :)

Just curious what the business model is, though. Are you really making profit on £20 minus Rightmove etc. Or am I missing something?

Still, either way it's a great thing for London especially! Good work.

Thanks!

We'd definitely be making profit at £20 a listing. Right now, we're letting new landlords list for free, which is definitely a big factor in our growth - but we're seeing that either our landlords are returning, or they are waiting until their next property becomes available.

For now, we're ramen profitable, but as we continue to grow, that will turn into some real profit. The rental market is overpriced in it's current form, and there isn't much between our service, and the one you get from paying a letting agent £1500. The more we can offer, the more we'll generate I'm sure.

Non-sexy is the new sexy. Good job, guys. If you don't mind sharing, I have a few questions. How long after your public release did you start seeing steady growth? What do you think has been your most successful means of driving traffic?

After launch - it was about 3-4 months before we started growing at all. There was definitely a hard gruel at the start to get noticed and gain trust, and that's not say it's gotten easier!

We then introduced referrals, and that's probably the reason for our steady growth. The more users we have, the more we grow, whereas marketing can only ever do so much and your just optimising your user acquisition cost all the time.

Nice pics. Are you sending out your own photographer like airbnb or people just make great photos them self in the uk?

Nope, we'd love to do that, but we're bootstrapped and the finances just don't work right now. We're hoping landlords can provide good enough photos and work with them, and we help a little bit by using Streetview if they have no photos of their own.

Out of curiosity, is the London rental market infested with bait-and-switch, phantom offerings, etc., like the ones in NYC and Shanghai?

Yes! Agents love that tactic, and that's one thing we're combating against. If our property says it's live, it's available to Rent Now - that's a big win with our system.

I live in the US and know nothing of the UK property market, but could you talk a bit about how you combat against this? Sorry if this is a trade secret, or otherwise 'non-discussable.'

It's not a secret - we simply don't let agents list with us!

On top of that, our properties are available to "Rent Now", this means tenants can rent the property through OpenRent. Whilst not all of our landlords use this feature, for any that do, we immediately know the property is let as we have the holding deposit.

You can see more on our info pages for landlords [1] and tenants [2].

[1] - http://www.openrent.co.uk/advertise-rental-property

[2] - http://www.openrent.co.uk/find-property-to-rent-from-private...

Very nice, thanks. Brokers/ agents have been a source of opacity in numerous markets, and while they have a place, I really like your approach (and thoroughness).

Good luck.

I'm planning to move back to London in January after a year abroad. I've been watching this since it was posted here a couple months ago and I'm really looking forward to using it to find my next rental.

Just wanted to say thanks, it looks great!

I'm just wondering.. Did you consider offering a white-label version of your engine?

What aspects of it exactly would you be referring to? And do you mean for agents to use?

I can see different scenarios here, like a group of landlords running a cooperative listing site, agent - yes, agents... And probably a local real estate board or something alike. In either case, there is a party who wants to run a listings site and they need an engine (probably SaaS) to make it possible. I'm just speculating of course.

It's definitely something worth considering, but for the most part, agents currently have software they use to manage their listings and push to portals. Many agents don't require websites, as the portals to the lead generation, and they just do everything offline as their margins are so high.

Having said that, it would be one avenue of attack / pivot if our new listing growth died, hopefully though, that won't happen. We think we can serve landlords better ourselves than be the platform for others to continue doing a bad job!

Wow, really love it, nice simple, functional design.

This is how rental listings should look like.

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