May 19, 2016

Roommate app comes to Seattle

Yadav

Ajay Yadav moved from India to New York 12 years ago for college, and he has lived with roommates ever since. He says finding them has always been a pain.

“I always thought there was not a good solution out there to help you find affordable housing and the right people to live with,” he said. “It was a constant struggle.”

This frustration drove Yadav, who has built two other startups, to found Roomi, an app and website that helps people connect with roommates. He launched Roomi in New York City in June 2015, and now he is bringing it to Seattle.

Yadav started working on Roomi in 2013 after learning that his friends shared his frustrations about the difficulty of finding roommates.

Roomi is already in New York City, Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Boston and Chicago.

Here's how it works: A user can list an available room or look for a room. Everyone creates a profile, and it includes things like social media accounts, whether the person is a night owl or an early riser and location and cost preferences.

A chat function allows potential roommates to get to know each other and decide if it is the right fit.

Roomi has a staff of security specialists that vets every listing. In total, about 20 people work at Roomi, which is based in New York and has an office in San Francisco.

Yadav said he decided to expand Roomi to Seattle because it is one of the fastest growing cities in the country, and housing costs are rising too. In a press release Roomi cited data from Rent Jungle, saying the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle is $1,604, and the average two-bedroom is $2,125, both above the national average. Roomi, Yadav said, can help people who might otherwise be pushed out of Seattle find roommates and stay in the city.

“While wealthy newcomers are helping to revitalize neighborhood business districts, the reality is that the city is becoming too expensive for nearly half the population, and many renters are being forced to move out of Seattle altogether.”

Roomi is not the first company Yadav has built. When he was 17 he said he founded a company that helped people bring businesses and marketing efforts online. Three years after that, he started an online classified site in India.