New York co-living space Roomrs has rooms for $1,500 a month

Roomrs

• Roomrs rents fully furnished apartments to students and
  young professionals in New York City.
• The apartments, which cost an average of $1,500 per
  month, come with utilities, housekeeping, and
  WiFi. 
• Founder Or Goldschmidt told Business Insider he plans
  to expand the service into SoHo and the East Village
  soon.
• Roomrs recently opened a new Williamsburg location and
  is adding smart mattresses and new technology to existing
  apartments. 

Or Goldschmidt’s experience moving between several apartments in
New York City made him realize how stressful it can be to secure
housing, pay for furniture, and find a new roommate.

Wanting to take this stress off other tenants’ shoulders,
Goldschmidt launched a startup last year to rent fully furnished
apartments to students and young professionals.
Roomrs initially rented a single apartment in West Harlem;
now the startup has grown to about 100 units in the city,
approximately 97% of which are occupied.

The monthly rent averages $1,500, which includes utilities,
housekeeping, and WiFi. Tenants can rent for as little as three
months, and Goldschmidt told Business Insider that nearly all of
the apartments have washers and dryers inside.

Roomrs

Goldschmidt said the startup recently formed partnerships with
Eight, a smart mattress company, and IOTAS, a smart home
technology developer. Roomrs apartments now come equipped with
smart locks, outlets, and shades. Each apartment is also equipped
with an Amazon Echo to control all of the “smart” features.

The smart mattresses track how long it takes tenants to fall
asleep and how long they stay asleep. Tenants can receive a
personal sleep report in the morning with information on their
heart rate, wake up time, and other data.

“Our focus is to provide a lot of
technology so our tenants will be able to enjoy a better
lifestyle and will have access to amenities that they won’t
necessarily have the option to have access [to] at the age that
they are right now,” Goldschmidt told Business Insider.

Roomrs opened a new unit in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn this July, and Goldschmidt said he plans
on expanding into SoHo and the East Village in Manhattan soon.
The startup will also continue expanding in Bushwick and
Williamsburg, where Roomrs already operates. 

Roomrs is one of the most recent companies to push for
all-inclusive co-living arrangements in cities with high rents
and few affordable housing options. Another New York-based
company, Common, has
expanded into Chicago, the Bay Area, Washington D.C., and
Seattle. Common raised
$40 million in funding from investors last year.

Rent-regulated apartments, which are the only affordable
options for many residents
,
are disappearing in light of increasing gentrification
throughout New York City.

While the city has the largest rent-regulation system in the
country, tenant protections are less robust in reality than on
paper,
according to The New York Times. 

While co-living startups often aim to alleviate the affordable
housing crisis, such apartments are not a realistic option for
many residents.

The U.S. Census defines housing as “affordable” if the
rent-to-income ratio is 30% or lower. For an apartment costing
$1,500 a month to be “affordable,” a tenant would have to make at
least $5,000 a month, or $60,000 per year. In New York City,
however, the per capita income is
roughly $34,000.