Apartment turnover in the Triangle could get faster. At least that's the goal of Charlotte startup Rent Ready, which is putting a recent $10 million equity funding to good use with the launch of a new platform that will speed up and smooth over the process of turning an apartment.
Rent Ready closed the Series A round in March, led by Grotech Ventures with participation from previous investors, like CreativeCo Capital, as well as six new investors. Co-founder Jonathan Kite said a large portion of those funds was used to invest in technology, including the company's new automated turn board platform.
The platform, which will be fully launched by the end of the month, updates in real time throughout the turn process, making it more efficient, Kite said.
"Right now apartment communities typically manage their turn process by tracking on a dry-erase board," he said. "What we wanted to do was use technology to recreate that experience in a platform that is connected to the services Rent Ready already offers."
Founded in 2016 by Kite, Ryan McMillan and Will Brugh, the startup was successful in becoming a single-stop go-between for apartment properties in need of turnover services in the Triangle, the Charlotte region and Atlanta. The company raised a $1.5 million seed round in 2018.
Kite said the platform digitizes the entire process, from the calendar used to track the timeline of a turn to automatically scheduling services through Rent Ready's vetted, quality contractors.
"For apartment communities, that's huge because we’re removing dozens of phone calls, emails and handwritten notes," he said. "Community managers are spending four to six hours per week tracking, scheduling and managing just this process ... That is the amount of time we’re giving back to them."
Kite said the automated turn board is a feature the team has spent nearly a year working on and will continue improving as its customers provide feedback. Currently 70 apartment communities in Charlotte and another 115 between the Research Triangle region and Atlanta are using Rent Ready's services. Kite said the startup will soon expand into Greenville, South Carolina.
"We are hard at work putting the capital we raised in the Series A to use. This is what we set out to do," he said. "We're going to continue to enhance functionality and focus on launch of new markets. This tech is something that will help us scale regionally."