Drawing from his own Craigslist apartment and search for a roommate in his 20s, CEO Johnny Wolff created HomeRoom.
The Prairie Village-based startup brings investors, tenants and homeowners together in a Silicon Valley-inspired online and mobile platform. The company helps random roommates sign a lease together.
The company now has 38 homes and about 300 tenants living in the metro area. When HomeRoom started in Kansas City, there was only one co-living house in Hyde Park.
HomeRoom helps investors purchase homes in co-living-friendly neighborhoods with demands for affordable housing with amenities. Each HomeRoom house is renovated with new technology such as smart TVs and smart locks that can be controlled through the app.
Wolff said Gen Z renters are amplifying trends millennials paved, such as delaying marriage, living with roommates longer, having diverse income streams, and the need for a way to dig themselves out of student debt.
“One of the deep needs in real estate is affordable housing, which has been echoing throughout society on a mass scale,” Wolff said. “We acquire a home with an investor, they purchase it, and then we fill up with tenants.”
One of Wolff’s goals with HomeRoom is to inspire renters to save money. They hopefully will eventually be able to buy their own homes locally and rent those properties, sustaining the "renter-made-investor" pipeline.
Potential tenants are thoroughly vetted, given background checks and pre-qualified by the company before they sign a lease. Once they rent within a HomeRoom community, tenants can switch into another HomeRoom house on the company’s mobile app.
App users also can pay rent, file maintenance requests, lock and unlock the front door with a keyless entry.
“The need is here. Kansas City is becoming a place where people, like myself coming from the coast, want to live,” Wolff said.
In 2022, HomeRoom plans to add six markets, mostly in the Midwest but potentially on the West Coast, too.
