Introducing Your Rental Concierge

“Finding a new place to rent is very burdensome. It's a huge undertaking. Uprooting my life, the cost of the move, moving trucks, also all the fees….it can be super stressful.”

Kimberly, a renter in Houston, TX is not alone-this sentiment is common among renters. In our research alone, we found 75% of renters described finding a place to live within their budget to be “extremely stressful.”

At Apartment List, we believe renters deserve better. We want our product experience to center on proactive support, always providing helpful information and leading renters to the best value. To be your personal rental concierge.

What Makes a Great Concierge?

A great concierge stands out. At a hotel, they won't just give you a restaurant name. Instead they listen to your needs, synthesize your feedback, and provide a personalized recommendation based on local information. A great concierge makes the reservation for you and suggests you bring an umbrella when the weather calls for rain.

At Apartment List, we are embracing this model and stand ready to serve you. Our rental concierge will do the heavy lifting, from curating your top matches and validating property info, to helping you connect with your favorite places, and highlighting ways to save you money. We will stand by your side from your initial thoughts about moving until your last box is unpacked. We will provide guidance during the overwhelming and stressful moments, and space when you prefer to explore solo.

The Why

In formulating our strategy, we wanted to understand people's associations with the word "concierge." We interviewed 12 renters, and showed them 3 distinct visual treatments of the concierge, both in and out of our product. We heard people repeating words like, “special,” “elite,” “helpful,” “informational,” “available,” and “proactive." We heard phrases like, "personal helper,” “make life simpler and easier,” and “jack of all trades.” People also had the strongest affinity towards a version we internally had named “Hue,” which evoked a feeling of calmness, with people comparing it to imagery of mountains and the sky, and "good things in the world.”

After validating the concierge concept with renters, we created a framework so our teams could bring the concierge to life in our product. To maintain consistency, we also created a visual language that clarified when and how to apply the concierge.

We designed a visual language that is guided, smart, (sometimes) urgent, consistent, integrated, trustworthy, and branded.

Introducing the Concierge

Our native app felt like the most natural place for our concierge experience because of the ability to be available to our renters, right there on their phones, whenever and wherever they need us.

This included a complete redesign of our onboarding quiz to incorporate the concierge. It touched everything from our button components, to re-writing the copy in the tone of voice of our concierge, to adding custom branded illustrations for our amenities, all the way to adding a typewriting effect animation.

Next, we will focus on how the concierge can provide insights to guide and help renters make informed choices about what they want in their search, specifically:

1. Location. With the concierge, we are introducing the ability to search by both list view and map view so that the renter can easily navigate between selecting the neighborhoods they know they want to live in, while also allowing them to discover neighborhoods near the points of interests that are important to them.
2. Budget. We have historical rent data for every city, cut by bed count. We want to bring this information to where it mattered most to renters: the moment they are deciding on their budget.
3. Income. Most places require an income of 2x the rent to qualify. We want to bring clarity to the rental process, and explain how we will use your income to help show you matches you qualify to rent.

We are excited to share even more concierge experiences in the upcoming months - stay tuned!