Filling in where StreetEasy falls short, Igluu touts the most number of active listings in the NYC marketplace and an intuitive platform that focuses on simplicity and transparency

Jan Fried, Director, Jan Beranek, CTO, Martin Mucha, CEO, Mitchell Uris, CFO and Aaron Frucher, Director NYC Operations

When StreetEasy’s rental listings halved after it unrolled a $3 per day per listing pricing policy, serial entrepreneur Martin Mucha saw an opportunity to create the new industry standard for a residential real estate site. Igluu.com pulls its listings from top feeds such as REBNY’s RLS, ListHub’s RealPlus and Nestio – and September integrations with OLR and Spherexx. On the day of launch, Igluu featured over 5,000 listings and will cover more than 95% of all active listings by the end of 2017 – approximately double the number of listings on StreetEasy.

Igluu is built around seamless search and discovery - incorporating the latest usability philosophies. Unlike other sites, Igluu only hosts exclusive listings and doesn't support Premier Agent, where unrelated brokers can bid on listing opportunities. Martin believes that the practice of selling leads dilutes the quality of broker service which causes users to have bad experiences. Instead, Igluu can quickly find and contact the broker best suited to show the property.

At the other end of the platform, the site is also engineered with the real estate broker’s best interests in mind. The site avoids daily listing fees, and features brokers in visually-rich and engaging profile pages. “The idea is to personalize the brokers and to create a community feel,” says Martin. “Our goal is to eliminate all the obstacles which keeps brokers from doing their jobs effectively.”

The Igluu team is betting that technology will continue to shape the real estate space and have scheduled innovative features and integrations to be unveiled in the coming months. Although secretive about what exactly these updates will be, Mucha believes users will be more than pleased – “We’re experimenting with artificial intelligence, blockchain and working on powerful ways to keep people engaged.” says Martin, “We are committed to advancing the online real estate experience and it’s going to be really cool.”