Manchester has fast become a major force in the UK economy and there are 79 new businesses created a year for every 10,000 people which is 50% higher than the UK average.
The population of Manchester has already increased by some 77,000 people since 2015 and the current population is predicted to keep on climbing from 2,710,074 currently to 3,028,104 by 2035.
On this basis Manchester will welcome more than 2,5000 new businesses between now at 2035, joining the likes of the BBC, Google, Amazon, LLP and Microsoft.
But while an improving infrastructure and affordable cost of office space is helping to draw these big names to the city, the influx of those needing a home has seen the cost of renting in Manchester climb 8% in the last three years.
As a result of increasing rental costs the number of us living in shared accommodation has grown by 100,000 people every ten years over the last two decades and with the cost of renting continuing to climb, this trend looks set to remain.
The issue? Living with strangers can be a lottery and you ultimately have no idea about who you are moving in with until the day arrives. But there is another way.
ideal flatmate is an online flat sharing platform that uses personality-based algorithms to match roommates based on their compatibility first and foremost to make sure they place like-minded people in each property.
The result is a much better suited house of people with the property itself coming secondary to this, saving tenants from spending large sums in deposits and rent, only to find they simply can’t live with their new rooms mates and have to make yet another move.
Founded in 2016 by Tom Gatzen and Rob Imonikhe, ideal flatmate was born from the frustrations of dealing with traditional room shares and has been going from strength to strength ever since.
Having established a foothold in the capital, ideal flatmate gave careful consideration as to their next step of national expansion, choosing Manchester based on the up and coming image, the growth of the build to rent market and the diverse social fabric that holds this city together which has become an integral part of the ideal flatmate model.
Co-Founder of ideal flatmate, Tom Gatzen, commented:
“ideal flatmate is all about creating a more harmonious rental experience and we’ve found that by matching people based on these fundamental personality traits, we create longer lettings with higher retention rates which not only makes for a happy tenant, but for happy landlords and letting agents.
There were a few factors as to why Manchester made sense as our next step in rolling out the ideal flatmate model. First of all its home to the largest build-to-rent scene outside of London. This is a huge area of focus for us as the time and money we can save build-to-rent developers by pre-populating entire sites at once is enormous.
We met with a number of big buy-to-rent names such as Urban Bubble, Grey Star and so on, who were already advertising a lot of stock in Manchester and so the immediate synergy in terms of a partnership was also a big draw.
On a ground level, the urban scene in Manchester is booming. There’s a very high retention rate in the number of students and with the notable migrations of big names such as the BBC it’s clear Manchester is already well on its way to becoming the go to UK city for social and professional reasons.
Most importantly, we felt all of this combined to give Manchester the community atmosphere, with the sort of people that fit with the ideal flatmate ethos and so we wanted to remain as true to this as possible when starting our expansion outside of London.
Room shares aren’t for everyone, but they are a fantastic way of meeting likeminded people, forming great friendships and expanding your life experience. We’re confident that Manchester will more than deliver on this and we’re delighted to call the city home.”
Dr Paula Banca of Cambridge University commented:
“We helped build ideal flatmate’s flat share matching software by creating an algorithm that works on each person’s compatibility score, based on their answers to a detailed questionnaire.
It’s designed around research that ideal flatmate carried out which identified the most common factors in a happy flat-share, ensuring matches are primarily based on these with more physical aspects such as the property itself taking a back seat.
Our goal is to continuously improve the matching algorithm to help achieve better matches and even happier flat shares and we are working on an ongoing basis with ideal flatmate to do this based on user feedback.”
