Finding an apartment on rent in a tedious task these days. This problem is exacerbated because of the countless middlemen, which we call “brokers”. There are a countless, charlatans in the guise of brokers who are ripping people off their money by giving them false commitments of finding their dream apartment. A new app named “Oliver” has been launched with a disruptive, simple idea of cutting the middleman and connecting the landlords with people who want to buy or rent property. Oliver is available as an iOS app and you can search apartment and property using this great app.
The interface and mode of usage is fairly simple: you launch the app in your iPhone, sift through all the listing of available apartments. These listings are directly from landlords, the owners of the property. If you like an apartment, tap on it and the app will tell you to choose a time slot for a meeting with the landlord for further details. That’s it. No commission, no tricky talks and riddle solving. You will get a direct contact with landlords because of Oliver.
Oliver’s cofounder Yossi Shemesh says that last year, the idea of this app struck his mind when he was having a meeting with a real estate dealer. He says that there are a few players in the same space Zillow, Trulia, StreetEasy, RentHop, NakeApartments, but they charge the users for the middleman, whereas Oliver connect its users directly to each other.
Oliver raised around $1 million from the US based angel investors. The app is currently available in New York, and the developers are planning to scale it big pretty soon.