Following his own struggles with finding a house to rent whilst at university, the co-founder of Manchester-based start-up Housr plans to make the house-hunting process as easy as going on Uber or Tinder for students.
The house-hunting search can be overwhelming for most renters, but it can be even more daunting for a young student at university.
The team behind Housr have ambitious plans to shake-up the process, with the app designed to make it easier for students with a Tinder-style swipe function for house matches.
“We want to make housing as frictionless as possible. You can order an Uber in three clicks, right? We hope to digitise the whole process for a student and gamify and simplify it for them,” Harry Panter, co-founder and CEO at Housr, told Prolific North.
He met his fellow Housr co-founder Ben Clayton whilst studying at the University of Manchester after joining the cricket club, soon discovering their shared issues with finding a house.
“In first year you’re wrapped in cotton wool. Everything is done for you, you’re provided with accommodation. Then you get pushed into the lion’s den in second year.”
“It is really overwhelming, there is so much information everywhere,” he said. “I thought ‘right’ I need to do something about this.”
He admired Mark Zuckerburg’s rise to fame with Facebook and dreamed about establishing a similar “on-campus vibe” for his own venture.
“I always had this idea that I really want to create something that’s cool like Mark Zuckerburg’s Facebook,” he said. “It was really attractive to me.”
