VIRTUAL ESTATE
Startup aims to put money in renters’ pockets
People moving out of a rental apartment may soon be able to pocket a little cash during the transition, thanks to a New York City tech startup.
Joinery, a company started by two former Google employees, promises to make finding an apartment in the city cheaper, easier and more transparent — in addition to allowing the exiting tenant to make a little money on the deal.
Folks leaving their apartment would list the place on Joinery and then arrange for the next renter to sign a lease with the landlord.
If the lease is signed, the exiting tenant gets a piece of the lease as a finder’s fee.
“We started this company because we felt there wasn’t really a good option for renters in the New York City market,” Joinery co-founder and Chief Executive Julia Ramsey told The Post.
“Most of the existing options were either way too expensive or extremely disorganized and prone to scams,” she said.
With current occupants listing the apartment on Joinery, Ramsey explains, it helps prospective renters get an accurate idea of what it’s like to live in the apartment and neighborhood.
“There’s a tremendous amount of informational loss when apartments turn over,” Ramsey said. “Joinery makes sense because people who have lived in a particular apartment tend to know it very well.”
The startup is also tackling one of the most dreaded aspect of the New York real es- tate business: the broker’s fee.
While most brokers in New York charge around 15 percent of the annual rent as their fee, Joinery caps the fee at one half of one month’s rent.
And instead of going into the pockets of a broker, the fee goes to the outgoing tenant who posted the listing — with Joinery taking a commission of 20 percent of what the exiting renter got.
Ramsey, who founded Joinery along with fellow exGoogler Vianney Brandicourt, told The Post they have no problem with broker’s fees, but believe the current market eliminates any sort of transparency of where the money is going.
“If a broker is good and someone is happy paying that person $6,000 for that service, then there’s no problem there,” Ramsey said.
“But we felt like a lot of consumers were being forced into paying for fees and things that they don’t necessarily want.”
One renter who used Joinery, identified as April A., said the company “brings a humanizing element” to apartment hunting.
“They care about helping you find a place you can feel at home without breaking the bank,” she said.
Joinery currently has 800 active listings in the five boroughs, with, not surprisingly, most of the concentration in Manhattan and hipster Brooklyn.
The site adds around 450 to 500 listings a month, and claims to have saved renters over $1.5 million in fees over the past year.
The startup, which has partnerships with five major New York City landlords, has wider ambitions. It will begin expanding to San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles in late 2019, and plans on launching in its first international city in 2020.