The only thing worse than living with a terrible roommate is having to find a new one, fast.
That's where ApartmentList.com comes in. The rental search engine startup, which began operating in Los Angeles last month, just launched a Roommates app for Angelenos (as well as renters in NYC, Boston and Chicago) on Thursday.
Think of the Roommates app as a matchmaking algorithm -- similar to dating websites -- for potential housemates. Profiles are synced up to users' Facebook profiles and then matched with other users based on budget and neighborhood preferences, as well as similar ages, interests and likes. If users are a potential match, both have to individually opt in for the app to connect them.
More crucially, said Apartment List CEO John Kobs, the Roommates app also highlights users' mutual friends -- "so you can ask them if John does the dishes," he joked to The Huffington Post in a phone interview.
Kobs, 32, no longer lives with roommates in San Francisco. But he once lived in both New York and LA with roommates and was motivated in part to start Apartment List because of the "pain" of finding new roommates.
"I had three [roommates] when I lived in New York, and one was moving to the West Coast," Kobs explained. "We had to interview 10 people for the spot, and it was a significant pain point for us. There's also the flake factor."
"Our hope is to help reduce a lot of the pain," added Kobbs.
To draw eyes toward the new Roommates app, Apartment List published an interactive infographic of "typical" Los Angeles roommates by neighborhood, weaving tongue-in-cheek local stereotypes with actually useful information like the area's average rent prices and estimated roommate savings.
Looking to rent in Hollywood? Expect to pay about $1,670/month in rent and for your roommate to boast about playing the dead guy on "The Young And The Restless." In Brentwood, expect to pay about $1,505/month for just one room -- and for your roommate to spout garbage like, "It's kind of like Uber meets Dollar Shave Club mixed with Bang with Friends."
Take a look at Apartment List's infographic (and see the interactive one), created by the company's social media maven (and born-and-bred Angeleno) Kera Zacuto. Let us know in the comments below: are you guilty of living up to these local stereotypes?
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