Spotahome opens Dublin office to aid in Irish housing crisis

Spotahome, an online booking website, has decided to take up roots in a brick and mortar to offer a more personable service to its customers

With the backdrop of Ireland’s deepening rental crisis, Spanish home rental startup Spotahome is doubling down on Dublin by opening an office in the city.

The company provides an online booking platform for tenants to find rooms and properties that have been checked by freelance ‘homecheckers’ who vet the rooms.

On the landlord and property manager side, it provides tools for managing property listings. There are currently more than 1,300 properties listed on the site in Dublin.

Founded in 2014, it has raised over $60 million to date from VCs including Kleiner Perkins and Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick.

Spotahome’s General Manager for the UK and Ireland, James Kirimy, told Fora that while the service has been available in Ireland since 2016, the market has until this point been managed from the London and Madrid offices.

“We really want to get much closer to the market and serve customers on the landlord side and the customer side. We want to be closer to them,” he said.

“It becomes an extension of the London team. We’ve created a hub for Spotahome in London and Dublin is quite hard to cover from London. People are travelling every week so having people in Dublin makes sense.”

An initial team of three will start in the Dublin office over the coming weeks, handling roles like sales and account management.

“They’re focusing on acquiring talent and expertise in the real estate space in Dublin. We’ve been there for a long time and we have a strong relationship with the key players in the industry.”

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