Two online apartment-rental services move closer together as Zumper announces today it has acquired PadMapper.
“The deal was a mix of cash and stock, less than $10 million,” Devin O’Brien, a Zumper spokesperson, tells BuzzBuzzHome News via email. “We unfortunately cannot disclose exact numbers.”
Forbes reports the deal was for “a bit less than $10 million,” citing an unnamed source.
The two brands will remain distinct entities while Zumper acts as the parent company. However, both PadMapper’s Chief Executive Officer Eric DeMenthon and its Chief Technology Officer Rob Crowell are joining Zumper.
Zumper is an online rental listing service that also lets apartment seekers submit rental applications digitally. PadMapper is a map-based rental search engine that pulls listings from a variety of sources, as well as offering its own.
Anthemos Georgiades, Zumper’s CEO, notes in a statement what the deal means for his company.
“Together, Zumper now becomes one of the largest players in the rental space, bringing us one step closer to our vision of bringing the ease of hotel booking into the apartment rental industry,” Georgiades says.
Zumper boasts more than a million rental listings, and says it drew four million visitors to its site in January alone. Based on projected Web and mobile traffic, it now expects to attract 67 million visitors in 2016.
On PadMapper’s blog today, Eric DeMenthon, the company’s CEO, outlines some of the challenges of running what in some ways was a small business despite its popularity.
“Our office was some combination of my apartment living room and our local public library. The park outside the library was our call room,” DeMenthon remembers.
He also touches on how his company, which at the time of purchase has a staff of four, will benefit from the larger Zumper.
“Fortunately, Zumper has figured out a lot of the things we haven’t been good at historically, and we have very well aligned visions for the long-term,” DeMenthon writes.
“Having a dedicated mobile team” and “actual partner support, instead of just me answering emails when I find time between deploying new HAProxy configs” are among the motivations for joining forces with Zumper, DeMenthon says.
From the time DeMenthon founded the company in summer 2008, PadMapper has typically shelled out less than $1,000 annually on marketing. Beyond $20,000 of DeMenthon’s own savings and $14,000 from startup fund Y Combinator in summer 2010, the company has been “essentially bootstrapped,” the CEO says.
Certainly Zumper — and its existing 27-member team — will be able to provide PadMapper with additional resources.
Since launching in 2012, Zumper has drawn venture capital funding totalling $20.2 million.
