Rent in New York City is expensive, we all know that. And as a result, countless adults live with roommates to make living in NYC more affordable.
But New York is hardly the only city where people have to deal with this. High rents are prevalent in European cities like Barcelona, Berlin and London. In those cities, one startup is working to make it easier to afford living by helping people find roommates.
Spanish startup Badi has built an online platform where people can post open rooms or search for available ones. After getting two million users in Europe, the startup announced Wednesday it’s expanding its service to New York.
“Every major city around the world is suffering from overcrowdedness and increasing rent prices,” Carlos Pierre, CEO and founder of Badi, said in a statement. “We started to solve this problem in Europe several years ago, and it didn’t take long for Badi to become the ‘go-to’ app for people looking for rooms to rent or roommates in E.U.’s biggest cities.”
He continued, “The strong interest from the participants in our beta group alongside the findings from our 2020 survey on NYC indicates that city dwellers are warming up to the idea of sharing and co-living arrangements. The overall sentiment and feedback we received lead me to believe that we can make a similar impact here in the U.S. and, naturally, that begins with New York City.”
Badi says it has processed the equivalent of 77 million euros (almost $84 million) worth of transactions since it launched in 2015 and currently hosts over 300,000 listings. Now that the platform has officially launched in New York, it’s in the position to expand even more.
The company’s platform had a soft launch in New York last November. During this time, it added hundreds of new users every day and saw bookings increase by 370 percent. The company also surveyed people in New York and found that 82 percent of respondents believe co-living is a growing trend, and 58 percent said they were open to living somewhere they had to share communal spaces.
To date, Badi has raised $45 million from investors and the company employs 125 people in offices across Barcelona, London, Berlin and New York. It hired 75 new employees between the start of 2018 and end of 2019.
