Apartment List shows renters a curated categories view based on their priorities rather than a full search list, helping them weigh trade-offs like commute time versus amenities. The platform only makes money from signed leases, so it's incentivized to match renters with landlords. When renters express interest, their information flows into landlords' existing systems so leasing agents can follow up.
Chapters
So could you maybe walk us through that product experience and what it's like for both sides?
The product experience on Apartment List? Yeah. Yeah. So on the renter side, renters who are looking for a home will typically start by just answering a few questions about them. So how many bedrooms are you looking for? What amenities are important to you? And most importantly, what is most important to you? And the options are staying within my budget, in the location that I want, getting all of the amenities. And so that really tells us a lot about the renter. Then where we land them, and this is where we get kind of a ton of praise from our renters, is on actually not a search page, but a categories experience. And so we'll say, this matches everything you want. Maybe there's only 3 that have everything you want. If you were to commute a little bit farther, but you want all your amenities, here's where you go. Or if you wanted to pay a little bit more, maybe this is where you could get. And so we really help people, renters, make those trade-offs. And around what's important to them in order to help them find a home that they love, which is our goal. So that is the renter experience. Typically, then they will go through, go click a category. Maybe they want to start with the things that match everything. They will decide whether they like, love, or don't like each of those properties, and then we'll encourage them to reach out to the properties that they are interested in. And at that point, the leasing agent will contact them. The way that Apartment List makes money is based on leases that are signed. And so properties— what properties love is that we make money only when they make money, rather than just every month or based on one phone number or based on something else. And so on the property side, their experience is actually primarily with our salespeople, not with our product. They experience— we push our information into the systems that they already use. So we'll push If a renter contacts them, it will show up as a tour booking, it will show up as an email, it will show up in their system with information that we have already collected about the renter, and then they can follow up. And so they sort of go through that third-party system, and then they talk to our sales agents and our customer success agents around their needs, around how we're serving them, and how we could kind of adjust to serve them better. So that's kind of, I think, the best summary of how both sides of the marketplace interact.
