I don't normally like to cross-pollinate between my normal life and SMNetwork, but I figured you guys might be able to help out, especially since it has roots in things I've learned from building this website.
So remember back when I made the
Internship Survey? And designed a survey to help objectively rate internships? So that's still running. It's doing well, although slowly, mostly due to lack of promotion, but hey, that's how it goes.
After leaving stage management I was an apartment leasing agent for five years, and then a Realtor, and then I quit outright in October to start my own company. It's focused on apartment rentals, it's web based, and it uses a lot of what I learned from the SMNetwork internship project.
RentConfident is the new company. We're a web-based research company that is trying to be the Carfax of apartments. Customers give us addresses of places they're thinking of renting, and we make details reports about the landlord, building, condo association, neighborhood, property manager, and make a risk assessment. We're in beta testing right now and hope to launch to the Chicago market this spring. Other locations may follow, depending on demand and data availability.
It's a neat idea and I'm very happy with how things are progressing, but we're having some trouble getting market data. We've got a survey put together and we've received just shy of 70 responses so far, but in order to have a decent sample size that reflects even the Chicago rental market we need closer to 400 responses. This is where you guys come in.
If you've rented before and feel so inclined, or have friends who have rented before, could you please take our market research survey and spread the word about it? They don't have to have rented in Chicago, or even in the US. We'd like to hear from anyone who's rented an apartment before.
Here's the survey link:
https://rentconfident.com/survey/index.php/422893/lang-enOf course, if you like the idea and happen to live in Chicago, I'd love it if you could spread the word about the company to your friends and fam. But for now the market research is the crucial thing so we can make a business plan that's got some basis in reality.
Thanks!
