Two competing peer-to-peer roommate search apps are now on the same team, as Room.me was recently acquired by Roomi — helping the latter grow its user base by more than 25 percent.
The New York-based roommate finder is now a more comprehensive tool for the rental and shared housing industry, and it’s got plans to build and grow in the near future.
Roomi launched out of beta in June 2015 and hit the ground running. Aiming to take the “scariness” out of finding a random roommate, the app debuted to the renters in New York City.
Just a little over a year later, and Roomi is now available to renters in major metros such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Austin, Washington D.C., Miami, Vancouver and Toronto.
The company covers 18 major cities overall and has expanded its reach over the past 12 months to 400,000 users, it says. With the acquisition of California-based Room.me, that consumer base will increase to about 500,000.
Room.me is active in six cities and raised $1.1 million in funding in the last year, according to Roomi.
The company services the growing co-living economy, as renters are seeking more flexible leases and people to buddy up with to save on cost.
“The number of millennials renting has reached new heights, and one-third of adults now live in shared housing, the highest rate since the 1960s,” Roomi CEO Ajay Yadav said in a statement. “We decided to acquire Room.me because we share the same optimism for the future of shared housing and the impact it is having on people around the world. We realized that by combining our companies we are bigger, stronger and better positioned to provide users with the best experience for finding shared housing.”
Roomi will take over the Room.me domain name, iOS and Android applications, web product and more. Most of Room.me’s features are expected to carry over to Roomi.
The team at Roomi doesn’t plan on slowing down anytime soon. Since gaining $4 million in funding and expanding to markets around the country, Roomi says its next steps include amped up security, such as ID verification and credit checks. The company also plans on making a user’s history more accessible via a “portable housing identity.”
