Ten Questions with James Buck, Co-Founder at Roome

"Search is becoming passive rather than active. Students want the platform to alert them when the right property becomes available, at the right price."

So says James Buck, founder at Roome, the matchmaking platform for university students looking for off-campus accommodation.

Roome combines matchmaking, marketplace, lifestyle and commercial partnerships—and it's already making £20,000 a month in recurring revenue. Universities are desperate to sign up, students love it... and a £2-3 million seed round is lined up for 2026.

University students are the next generation of home searchers. They have a distinct set of digital experiences that offer a glimpse of the future of search and lifestyle. Here's what Buck had to say on topics including ecosystems, monetisation, feature bloat, and the user behaviours shaping the future of homesearch and lifestyle...

What problem does Roome solve?

Roome addresses a significant gap in the transition from on-campus to off-campus living. For most students, this is the first time they have ever rented a home. The market is fragmented, difficult to navigate and built primarily for landlords and portals, not students.

Roome brings all of this into one place. By integrating with major portals and property providers, we display available stock, what is coming to market soon and key data insights such as historical pricing and area information. Instead of guessing, students can make informed rental decisions.

However, Roome is more than a housing search platform. It is a full ecosystem designed for first-time renters. Students can use an algorithmic matching system to find compatible housemates based on lifestyle, habits, personality and budget. They can fill or find spare rooms, similar to platforms like SpareRoom, but entirely free. Communities and local insights are built directly into the experience, helping students understand where they fit within a city and who they can live with.

For universities, Roome solves two major issues: student retention and capacity. The average dropout rate in the UK is 6.4 per cent, and poor housing or living with the wrong people is a major contributing factor. Roome solves two linked problems: helping students find the right people and the right home, and helping universities support the majority of their population who now live off campus.

Who uses Roome and why?

Students use Roome to find housemates, search and compare accommodation across the entire market, learn about the local area and set up everything from guarantors to bills.

Universities partner with Roome because most of their student population now lives off-campus, but institutions have very little visibility of that world. Roome provides data on rents, student locations, housing supply and affordability. Ten UK universities already work with Roome.

Local and national student-facing brands also use Roome to reach renters at the right moment in their journey, whether that’s banking, guarantors, storage, gyms or local businesses.

How does Roome work?

Students sign up to the app and answer a tailored onboarding flow. If they need housemates, they complete the vibe quiz, which asks questions about lifestyle, preferences, habits and some fun personality insights. Once the profile is live, Roome shows compatibility percentages with other students. It’s structured matching based on who you would successfully live with.

Roome sources stock through integrations with major property portals, PBSA providers, student accommodation operators and agent feeds, supported by limited scraping to ensure coverage. Roome is not competing with portals; it is sending them high-intent leads. Any student coming through Roome has already chosen a group, set a budget and confirmed search criteria, which means they are much closer to signing a tenancy.

We will soon launch price tracking and search recommendations, similar to how Skyscanner alerts users when flight prices change. Students will be able to see whether a property is a good deal, what the area is like and how fast properties in that location normally rent.

How does one build “ten platforms in one”, as you call it?

By staying disciplined. From the beginning, we made one rule: only build what makes life easier for students or universities. If it does not solve a genuine problem, we don’t build it.

There is a temptation in PropTech to add features for the sake of volume. We avoided that. Instead, we spoke to students constantly, ran rapid feedback loops and built only what was validated by real demand. We test fast, collect data and iterate. The product has evolved from lived experience rather than theory.

In the early days, it was easier because we were students ourselves. Now that we are older than our users, we work even harder to stay close to them. Every decision is driven by usage, behaviour and data, rather than assumptions.

How does Roome make money?

Roome monetises in three ways.

First, universities pay for access to dashboards, data insights and reporting on off-campus living. This includes information on where students live, what they’re paying, affordability pressure, future demand, and overall housing conditions. Universities have never had this level of visibility before.

Second, Roome integrates value-added services directly into the rental journey. Guarantors, bill splitting and related rental services are offered at the exact moment students need them. This lowers acquisition costs for partners and generates revenue from referrals.

Third, Roome works with local and national businesses to offer student services and experiences. From student banking to local gyms or food spots, the platform connects verified student audiences to businesses in a more targeted, effective way than traditional advertising. This is also monetised through performance-based partnerships. All three streams are high-margin and capital-light.

How are you funded, and will you raise money soon?

Roome currently generates around £20,000 in monthly recurring revenue. We closed a pre-seed round earlier this year and have raised over £1.1 million from angel investors to date.
We plan to raise a larger Seed round in Q2 2026, targeting £2–3 million, to scale nationwide, expand engineering and data capabilities and onboard our first international university partner.

What is the experience of a first-time entrepreneur finding investment?

It is difficult, especially without an established network. We started Roome while still at university, which meant we had very few investor connections. We built our network by speaking to founders, operators and people we respected, and asking for advice, not money. One of the best lessons early on was that if you ask for money, you get advice. If you ask for advice, you may get money.

You need to develop resilience quickly. Some conversations make you question whether the business will ever work; others confirm you’re building something important. You cannot take it personally. In the early stage, investors are backing the founder as much as the business. They want to know you can execute under pressure, solve hard problems and keep going when it gets uncomfortable.

University students are the next generation of home buyers. What user behaviour trends are emerging?

Younger renters expect technology to do the work. They do not want to manually browse endless listings; they expect personalised recommendations, transparency and a full end-to-end journey.

Search is becoming passive rather than active. Students want the platform to alert them when the right property becomes available, at the right price. They also care as much about compatibility with the area, to them and their lifestyle needs opposed to the property itself. We’re seeing larger numbers of Gen Z being delayed in buying homes, being forced to share rentals instead. We’ve seen that living with the wrong people is a larger pain point than the house itself.

The industry has focused heavily on marketplace listing, but the next wave will focus on matching, personalisation and predictive data.

Where is home search moving in the next three years?

The future of PropTech is predictive rather than reactive.

Platforms will move towards automated recommendations, pre-qualification and market prediction. Users will know whether a property is priced fairly, how fast similar homes are rented, what the area is like, and whether it fits their lifestyle before even booking a viewing. Compatibility scoring between housemates will become normal, especially in co-living and HMO markets.

The shift will be from showing options to making decisions easier. Roome is already building towards that future.

What isn’t the real estate world talking about that it should?

The human side of renting. Most PropTech innovation has focused on landlords and agencies: better CRMs, better automation, better lead flow. Very little has been built for renters themselves, especially first-time renters.

Students make up one of the UK’s largest rental groups, yet have been largely ignored by technology. Poor housing decisions affect wellbeing, finances and academic success, but platforms have not been designed to support the person actually living in the property.

The next decade of PropTech will be renter-first rather than landlord-first. Platforms that improve real outcomes for tenants—not transactions—will shape the industry.