In our latest real estate tech entrepreneur interview, we’re speaking with Jonas Bordo from Dwellsy.

Who are you and what do you do?

I’m Jonas Bordo and I’m the CEO and Co-Founder of Dwellsy, a free rental listing site where owners and property managers can get high quality leads for free and where renters can find a rental and make it home.

What problem does your product/service solve?

In recent years while I was leading central operations for Essex Property Trust, I saw it get more and more difficult for renters to find rentals as fraud on Craigslist exploded. At the same time, the pay-to-play ILS platforms consolidated and raised prices aggressively, causing their rental inventories to shrink and marketing costs to grow rapidly for multifamily and single-family owners and operators. All the while lead quality floundered.  

Before Dwellsy launched, those owners and operators had no easy, free path to publicize their listings and get high-quality leads, and renters had no obvious tool to access a broad range of different rental options. Dwellsy fills that gap as a completely free listing service (free to list, and no charges for leads or leases) that makes it easy for renters to find their next home.

What are you most excited about right now?

Against the backdrop of the COVID 19 pandemic, I’m feeling very fortunate that Dwellsy is in a position to help America’s 110 million renters and more than 10 million owners and property managers.  

For property managers, we’re a free tool to drive high-quality leads and lower their cost of marketing – much needed at this time.  And for renters, we offer an incredibly broad and growing inventory, great search tools and true organic search – which will make any search for a new rental home or apartment more successful.

What’s next for you?

We had a huge year in 2019 – launched the business, built an amazing core team, went live with our initial product and started finding renters great homes and apartments.  

2020 is going to be about broadening and deepening our reach and enhancing our product.  We have almost 8 million units and a quarter of the NMHC Top 50 Property Managers listing with us today and we aim to increase that substantially.  We have just started to welcome consumers to our platform this year, and we anticipate that growth in consumer traffic – and delivery of free leads to property managers – will continue to grow at a rapid rate this year.  

We will also launch our first few paid products — for renters to help them conduct more effective searches and to help small mom & pop landlords list properties more effectively.  

Of course, we will continue to offer the same free, high quality leads to owners & managers – that will not change.

What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

It’s hard to name just one, but top of mind today is the Housing Industry Foundation, which has done amazing work here in the Bay Area supporting renters in times of crisis over the years. They are all the more necessary now, given how many renters are struggling with affordability today.

Meet The RE Tech EntrepreneurThanks to Jonas for sharing his story. If you’d like to connect, find him on LinkedIn here.

We’re constantly looking for great real estate tech entrepreneurs to feature. If that’s you, please read this post — then drop me a line (drew @ geekestatelabs dot com).