Colombian Rentals Marketplace Aptuno Gets $1.9M in Seed Funding

The Colombian end-to-end rental marketplace Aptuno has received a reported $1.9 million in funding. Participating in the round were investors such as FJ Labs and SquareFoot founder Johnathan Wasserstrum as well as some notable names in the world of real estate including Property Finder CEO Michael Lahyani, VivaReal co-founder Brian Requarth and Online Marketplaces' own Simon Baker.

Aptuno operates in a Colombian rentals market which is particularly inefficient, suffers from a lack of trust and regularly sees vacancies of up to six months. Prospective tenants in Bogotá and Medellín can search through listings, be pre-approved and sign a contract through Aptuno's platform.

The company reportedly plans to use the money raised to develop technology that improves its service, specifically financial risk machine learning models designed to analyse contracts and applicants with the aim of further reducing the number of transactions that require a third-party guarantor.

Aptuno is one of a new generation of end-to-end rental companies seeking to bring rental transactions online and offer solutions around third party guarantors and tenant screening. Operating with similar end-to-end models in the region are companies such as Homie in Mexico as well as AoCubo and the Softbank-backed unicorn Quinto Andar in Brazil.