Spanish startup Badi, the international long-term room rental platform, announced today its official launch in New York City to provide a safe and easy solution for finding roommates and rooms for rent. After surpassing more than two million users in Europe and facilitating the equivalent of €77 million in transactions on its platform, Badi’s web and mobile app now features over 300,000 listings that are growing by the day.
Badi, founded in 2015, has seen extensive growth since it’s soft launch in November of last year, adding 100s of new users per day and growing booking requests by 370% during that time period. By offering a more seamless way for users to list and find rooms, Badi is quickly growing its New York City user base and outpacing its competitors.
“Every major city around the world is suffering from overcrowdedness and increasing rent prices,” said Carlos Pierre, CEO of Badi. “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 EU’s biggest cities. The strong interest from the participants in our beta group alongside the findings from our 2020 survey on NYC indicate that city dwellers are warming up to the idea of sharing and co-living arrangements. The overall sentiment and feedback we received leads me to believe that we can make a similar impact here in the US and naturally, that begins with New York City.”
To better understand how technology can provide solutions for the residents of super cities like New York, Badi designed a survey to examine the trends in co-living, in the context of increasing urbanization and the pressures on housing and infrastructure, living arrangements, opinions on roommates and more. In this survey, Badi found that 82.14% think co-living is a growing trend and shared living spaces with shared resources are viewed favorably, with 59% being open to such an arrangement.
Available on the web at Badi.com or through Badi’s iOS and Android apps, users can search for rooms and roommates based on individual preferences and other filters such as age, interests, lifestyle preferences, and nationality. Powered by advanced AI and ML matching engines, Badi’s in-house algorithm analyses behavioural data to offer more quality connections between renter and seeker.
However, unlike existing apps, Badi provides a safe and secure communications channel for users to get to know potential roommates without an intermediary. In addition to its secure inbox, Badi also provides additional features focused on ensuring the authenticity of listings, such as its visual verification tool for ensuring renters profiles and photos of the rooms and amenities listed are up to date and correct.
Born out of necessity, a number of social and economic factors have made the idea of co-living very attractive to city dwellers. The United Nations projects that 2.5 billion people will live in cities by 2050 which will ultimately change how people live and also push the norms on how people share across the globe will. The explosion in urban populations cause rents to skyrocket and force city dwellers to rethink the functionality of current living situations.
