Placemate matches tenants to their perfect rental home, specializing in long-term housing for locals. If you’re currently looking for housing, fill out a renter profile and Placemate will send you homes that match your search criteria when they become available. Once you’ve submitted a renter profile below, you’ll receive insight on homes before they go live on our listings page. Fill out a renter profile today!
Creating a renter profile with Placemate is fast, free, and easy. Enter your household size, budget, and employment information to be matched with potential homes.
When a new home becomes available, Placemate sends listings to renters in our database whose renter profile criteria match the parameters of the home. You’ll receive the listing 24 hours before we post it on our website.
As interested renters reach out, we send qualified applicants to the homeowner. Then the homeowner selects applicants they would like to show the home to.
Placemate sends applications to renters who the homeowner is interested in moving forward with. We do a comprehensive tenant screening and the homeowner makes the final selection for their tenant.
Placemate’s mission is to help the local workforce secure housing. Because of that, we prioritize renters who are locally employed and those who already live in the community. We have a three-tiered system to ensure that local and established renters receive listings first and are the first renter profiles we send to homeowners.
Tier 1: Locally Employed
At least one member of the household has local employment and lives in the region. This includes locally employed people who are trying to move closer to where they work, or who are moving to the region for a new job in the community.
Tier 2: Established in the Region and Working Remotely
At least one member of the household is already established in the community (with their primary residence in the area) and has remote employment.
Tier 3: Moving to the Region and Working Remotely
No one in the household currently lives in the area or has work in the community. This includes people looking to relocate to the region long-term with remote employment.
You can read more about our tiered system in this blog post.
If you’re not receiving listings, it might be because the listings we have do not match the exact criteria you filled out on your profile (ex: the rent is higher than your stated budget or the home has space for only one car but your household has two adults). Please note that we go off of your criteria exactly, and will not assume you are willing to flex from that unless you’ve told us otherwise. We will also not send you listings assuming that the homeowner will be willing to flex their criteria either (ex: we will not reach out to you if the homeowner has stated no pets but your profile shows that you have one well-behaved dog). You can always update your renter profile by emailing us directly. Soon you’ll be able to edit your renter profile yourself from our website – stay tuned! You can read about how we prioritize tenants and who we send listings to first in FAQ question one.
Placemate represents each candidate fairly, with unbiased information to the homeowner and ensures that homeowners follow the Fair Housing Act. However, homeowners make the decision about who they show the house to and who they select for their tenant. There is a huge discrepancy in supply and demand — we have far more renters looking for housing than we have homes available. We understand that it can be frustrating to not be selected for showings, or after the showing, to not be selected as the tenant. Please know that we are doing our best to find housing for as many local renters as we can.
There is no fee to complete a renter profile or rental application. The only fee you pay is for a $38 background check during the final stages of the process, immediately preceding lease signing. Note that if you complete your background check and do not move forward with a lease at that property for any reason, the background check is transferable to other properties in our system within 30 days. You can also download the background check and use it for other purposes.
Placemate works with homeowners, informing them of the median budget for renters in our system in hopes of making their homes affordable for locally employed renters. However, the homeowner ultimately gets to decide on the final rent price for their home. Placemate does not take a cut of monthly rent or add in fees that make homeowners set higher prices on their homes
