A new app called Mietz wants to simplify the often confusing and time-consuming search for an apartment. To do this, she uses the Tinder principle – a swipe to the right signals interest, a swipe to the left means: “Next offer please!” This concept has at least once convinced soccer professional Mario Götze, who is just one of the prominent investors. TECHBOOK took a closer look at the app.
Finding a cheap and nice apartment in larger cities is difficult, especially for young people with low incomes. Rents continue to rise and affordable housing in certain areas has become scarce. You often have to be prepared for mass viewings in one way or another if you get an invitation at all. If you then hand in your documents, there is often not even a rejection. The Mietz app wants to fundamentally change this inefficient and frustrating process.
Mietz app for digital apartment search
Lena Tuckermann can also report on this exhausting way of looking for an apartment. She sent out several hundred inquiries and applications to find an apartment in Hamburg – without success. “After about five months of searching, I extrapolated how much time I had already invested in the search. It took me about 50 hours to search and about 200 messages,” Tuckermann told TECHBOOK. That’s why she soon wondered whether there were technical possibilities to make this process better.
The young woman then worked out her solution in Berlin with her co-founder Johann Kim. The apartment search is intended to bring potential tenants of an apartment together with the landlord using the well-known “swipe” function, which is modeled on the Tinder dating app. Contact is only established when both parties have expressed their interest by swiping right across the smartphone screen. The idea for the digital apartment search with the smartphone was ready.
In order for a match to come about when looking for an apartment in the app, personal preferences are specified in the profile. You can quickly add your own photos and a description of your hobbies and job to convince the landlord. In addition, there are proofs of income or guarantees, which can be activated individually by the searcher for landlords as soon as a match is established. This means that those searching can send their documents in a targeted manner. In terms of data protection, the app already has an advantage, even if a match does not yet mean the conclusion of a rental contract. When looking for an apartment, it is not uncommon to reveal private details via a tenant questionnaire, which then goes through several hands.
It is important to us that data sovereignty lies with those looking for an apartment. We treat the data strictly confidential. The landlord only has access if the applicant actively approves it. If there is a match with the landlord, you can release your application documents with one click. In this way, you don’t send your sensitive data to many landlords, but can share it independently if a landlord is interested. Without a single email.
Lena Tuckermann, founder and CEO of Mietz
Intuitive and clear application
In the app itself, viewing the apartment offers is very easy. You only have to enter your name and telephone number first and then you can start viewing the offers directly. Everything that is swiped to the right tells the app that you like the apartment. A swipe to the left, on the other hand, means rejection. A new offer in the selected city is then immediately displayed. This is intuitive and saves you from constantly clicking on new pages. You can either complete your own profile at a later point in time or, of course, create it directly.
Each apartment offer contains several photos at the top with information on price, location, square meters and number of rooms. If you scroll down, you can look up detailed information, for example how the rent including heating is made up and whether the apartment is furnished.
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Young target group for the apartment search via app
Tuckermann cites young people as the target group. Students and young professionals in particular have a particularly difficult time on the housing market. This generation also travels a lot digitally. The Mietz app therefore primarily focuses on corresponding offers in apartment buildings or on owners who want to rent specifically to this young and flexible target group.
It remains to be seen whether the app offers cheaper offers when looking for an apartment than the competition on real estate portals, since Mietz has only been available for a short time. The app is currently available in the beta version in both the app and the Play Store. In Berlin, however, the application can already be used on a large scale. In addition, apartments in apartment houses are often furnished. This is practical for a flexible temporary move-in, but there is an additional furnishing surcharge on top of the rent.
Anyone who compares the offers of the Mietz app with one another will also notice the price range between the offers. You can see some apartments with rental prices that seem too cheap to be true. On the other hand, some offers are well above the price per square meter of the comparable rent in the surrounding area and are therefore noticeably expensive. That’s not unusual in a big city like Berlin, but it’s of little use to a low-income tenant.
The high prices can partly be explained by the fact that the apartments are mostly furnished or only rented for short periods. Especially young people and/or people who are not yet professionally stable are often willing to pay higher rents – also out of necessity. In order to cushion this somewhat, Mietz wants to make the widest possible range of apartments available. “For example, we also work with student dormitories for which no proof of creditworthiness is required,” says Tuckermann.
Mario Götze and other big names are investing in Mietz
The Mietz app cannot change the fact that the rental market is overpriced because the supply of apartments is too scarce. At least looking for an apartment with the app is fun and easy to do. Mietz could offer real added value in the long term, especially to the young target group addressed. But the offer should also be interesting for everyone who has reached their limits in the rental jungle of the big city. According to its own statements, the start-up was able to collect one million euros in investor funds in a pre-financing round. The investors include soccer professional and World Cup final goalscorer Mario Götze, Christine Kiefer from Angel Invest and Jon Oringer, founder and CEO of Shutterstock.
The start-up also has big plans for the future. Mietz wants to offer a legally secure conclusion of a rental contract via the app. A qualified electronic signature should be used for this purpose. However, such digitally concluded contracts are excluded for certain contracts in Germany. Digital rental contracts are not tied to a specific form, but must be provided with an electronic signature so that a legally secure signature can be accepted. If the Mietz app manages to offer an approved rental agreement within its own application, this could definitely inspire success.