About Openigloo

I've had my share of bad rental experiences in New York. Neglectful landlords, management companies that wouldn't pick up the phone when something went wrong.

So whenever I went apartment hunting, I'd stand outside buildings I was considering and wait for someone to walk in or out and ask: "Hey, do you live here? How's the landlord? Should I move in?"

That was the light bulb moment for Openigloo. What if we could crowdsource reviews from renters, pair them with city data, and give every renter their own background check on a building and landlord before they sign? Landlords get to do their due diligence on renters. Renters deserve the same.

I joined forces with my Columbia classmates, Srujan Routhu and Lidor Bar David, and we launched Openigloo in the summer of 2020. We quickly grew to tens of thousands of users and our reviews were helping identify good and bad buildings across the city.

After speaking with thousands of those renters, they told us they wanted more than just due diligence. They wanted help actually finding and securing an apartment. They wanted to understand their rights: whether a unit was rent stabilized, whether it was protected by Good Cause Eviction, whether the landlord had a history of steep rent increases.

Since then, we've grown from a review platform into a full-service rental marketplace. Today, Openigloo helps New York renters find, apply, sign, and pay rent on their next apartment, all in one place. We're grateful to the renters, landlords, and agents who've helped us get here, and we're just getting started on making renting in New York City as fair and seamless as humanly possible.

— Allia Mohamed, Co-founder & CEO