I agree, the concierge services felt like a weirdly distinct service.
Also, the business model seems weird. Why would someone pay $100/month for, hopefully, years in order to cut down on one-time costs and hassles around the initial renting? Regardless of whether it ends up being cost-beneficial, it just seemed like a weird match to me. You're "subscribing" to a service that does a bunch for you in month 1 and then nothing in later months.
Maybe that's what the concierge part of the service is meant to address, but I'm very dubious of that portion of the business.
Once the member has finalized a place, we take over. We deal with onboarding, the security deposit, and rent the flat for the member... After the member moves in, we provide him/her with a host of services ranging from helping them when they are home and sick, to coordinating repairs.
As mentioned by others, the whole site is making a heavy weather out of simple (and seems like a useful) concept.
1. I don't think that coordinating repairs is a big deal. I mean, maybe I've just been lucky with landlords, but I feel like generally when I've needed repairs, I've called my landlord, or emailed them, and then that's that. And repairs are a far-from-constant problem -- most months, my need for someone to coordinate my repairs is zero.
2. The concierge service is... well, I don't know. I mean, we could certainly imagine a concierge service that provided $100 in value per month. But it feels like staffing a concierge service company is totally different from staffing a renter's agreement arbitrage company, and that there's no particular synergy between the two, and also I kind of doubt the ability of a small startup that's clearly focusing on the "renter's agreement arbitrage" business to provide a really useful concierge service.
I think there is market (maybe niche) where some maintenance aspect is taken care of when one is not at home or even otherwise; apart from repairs it could be things like regular house keeping and cleaning. After all, home cleaning startups in US is a thing.
But I agree whatever is the value proposition to customers it needs to be articulated well and in simple terms. The site's content is a mess.
[Edit]
> But it feels like staffing a concierge service company is totally different from staffing a renter's agreement arbitrage company.
Somewhat agree to this. There would be two kind of customers, one who would be just interested in renter's agreement arbitrage and after that they are self sufficient to take care of day to day issues around the rental; and the other one would be in for hassle free rental experience from the day 1 to the day they go away.
It is kind of obvious that founders are targeting the later ones, and as I said it could be a niche segment but seems like an interesting area nevertheless. And who knows if they do well then they maybe able to convert customers from one to other.
Slumlords are absolutely a thing, but adding a middleman between you and a slumlord has questionable value. Nor are people who have £100 a month to blow likely to have slumlords in the first place.
Also, the business model seems weird. Why would someone pay $100/month for, hopefully, years in order to cut down on one-time costs and hassles around the initial renting? Regardless of whether it ends up being cost-beneficial, it just seemed like a weird match to me. You're "subscribing" to a service that does a bunch for you in month 1 and then nothing in later months.
Maybe that's what the concierge part of the service is meant to address, but I'm very dubious of that portion of the business.