Sophomore Jonathan Manta sought a subletting opportunity this past summer, planning to relocate to New York and work in concrete construction. However, he found little by way of rental opportunities.
“It was impossible to find a sublet. It was so difficult,” Manta said. “I went through like 10 websites and they were all so old, so terribly made.”
With summer and his work fast approaching, Manta had limited time to secure his housing.
“I literally had a week to find a home,” Manta said.
So, with few options left, Manta resorted to paying additional fees to contact landlords and use confusing websites.
“I felt it was just a little unfair,” Manta said.
Frustrated after his experience, Manta felt that there had to be a better system for finding rental opportunities.
“I just thought of the idea,” Manta said. “I was working out, and I [thought], ‘I feel like that’s needed at Tufts.’”
Reflecting on Tufts specifically, Manta recognized common obstacles students face when searching for housing. One struggle is the difficulty of determining a reasonable price point when there is high variability in rental costs.
“There’s some subletting that’s $1,600 a month and there’s some that are $850,” Manta said. “You want to see all options before sticking to [a particular rental.]”
Manta also noted that most subletting and rental websites were not kept up to date, making it hard for students to determine which rentals were available and which were not.
“If you go on Zillow, Redfin, Apartments.com … they’re very unregulated and a lot of the listings are old and not filtered through,” he said.
An entrepreneur at heart, Manta decided to start his own venture. Studying quantitative economics and entrepreneurship, Manta is familiar with business ventures but is not as familiar with computer science. So naturally, he taught himself to code over the summer in order to create his website.
“In my afternoons I was just coding after my shifts … trying to figure out a better way,” Manta said. “I watched so many YouTube videos to teach myself.”
The result: Squibber, a hub for student housing opportunities.
“I built an aggregate messaging system for students to contact real estate agents, students with subletting opportunities and then also landlords,” Manta said.
Launched in August, Squibber.com displays available rental and subletting opportunities, each of which contains the contact information for the landlord, broker or student posting the space. Students can also filter out certain properties while they search on the Squibber site — options include the person listing the property, presence or broker fees, pets, square footage and more.
Site visitors can also read a blog where Manta posts advice about leases, finding roommates and securing student housing.
Manta wanted students to avoid the unnecessary fees he faced when contacting people about subletting opportunities. As a result, the website is free to use and there are no fees for contacting brokers or landlords.
“Everything’s free. You just set up an account,” he said.
Manta also maintains relationships with the brokers and landlords that use Squibber to ensure listings are accurate and up to date, saving students the headache of reaching out about properties that are already signed.
“If the house is fully taken care of, [brokers must] take it down on the site and make it so that students don’t waste their time,” Manta said.
Manta focused his primary efforts on Tufts specifically, choosing even to make Squibber’s logo an elephant wearing a graduation cap.
“I [thought], ‘I’m gonna pilot at Tufts. Let me make it somewhat Tufts related,’’’ Manta said.
That said, he is working on expanding to accommodate other colleges and universities in and around Boston, and maybe someday in other cities as well.
“Right now, I’m just piloting in Boston,” Manta said. “I’m gonna work with [Boston College] and Northeastern really soon.”
Manta is building relationships with brokers, especially those that specialize in student housing, in hopes of expanding and maintaining the offerings on Squibber’s site.
Manta has also been in contact with Boston real estate companies. “They really like the idea, and they really think it’s something that’s very needed.”
“I’m working with … five agencies, and essentially they’re going on my platform and then posting all the opportunities for only undergrad and graduate student housing,” he said.
Relationships with these agencies also make the prospect of attaining more rental opportunities promising.
Squibber is finding early success. The site reached over 5,000 users in the past month and Squibber’s social media platforms reached over 25,000 views in the past month. Additionally, Squibber won a $2,000 grant through the Tufts Entrepreneurship Initiative Fund.
The name Squibber has a unique story in Manta’s family, cycling through several ventures before finding its way to his student housing project.
“Both my parents are immigrants from Romania, and during the dot com era, [my dad] purchased like 20 domains, and one of them was Squibber,” Manta said. “He bought it because he thought it was so similar to Twitter.”
Then began a succession of family businesses under the name. Manta’s father first used the name Squibber, and then his older brother did as well. However, Squibber was never used as the name of a profitable venture.
When Manta began his student housing project, he struggled to come up with a name. Then, Squibber came to mind.
“I had like 50 names that I was trying to think of for the website. And then, at the end of the day, I jokingly said to my brother, ‘Let me just take Squibber.’”
This is not Manta’s first project, as he previously started a nonprofit called NYC Mentors with his brother and managed to secure hundreds of thousands of dollars through advertising. It also likely won’t be his last.
Manta’s ultimate goal was to simplify the housing process for students at Tufts and beyond.
“I’m trying to really help students,” he said. “I didn’t want to make it so that students have to go through all these loopholes to pay for things.”
Squibber may eclipse the Canvas off-campus housing page and the flyers plastered around campus. Positive sentiments about Squibber also motivate Manta to keep developing the project.
“Now that I see students actually using it, it makes me want to work on it more.”
