There's nothing quite like a cold shower on a winter morning to encourage tenants to get vocal about their landlords' accountability. Hoping to put their views to good use is Neighbo: an online platform that brings tenants, property managers and landlords together to improve relationships and efficiency, similar to New York's LifeAt, which we covered a while back.
Neighbo offers a suite of three core products: Neighbo Lite, a free service for communities to create neighbourhood networks; standard Neighbo, a private community tool with collaborative widgets, calendars and forums; and Neighbo Manager, a B2B version full of bells and whistles that help property managers keep tabs on their buildings. Prices vary depending on how many apartments or units are in each community.
Founder and managing director Paul Fox was inspired to create the site for UK residents after living in a faceless, poorly managed apartment block for many years. After joining with several property management experts, he launched Neighbo last month. As our social worlds become increasingly virtual, Neighbo taps into the counter trend of seeking connections in our local spheres. Want more nuggets of inspiration along these lines? Check out the "warm bodies" section in trendwatching.com's off=on briefing.
Website: www.neighbo.com
Contact: hello@neighbo.com
Spotted by: Katrina Lincoln
Our service ResidentsHQ, (www.residentshq.com) has also been running since 2007 with great success, and is similar to LifeAt and Neighbo.
With a private ResidentsHQ social networking website in your development, you can meet and chat to your neighbours online, set-up clubs and events, share experiences on local restaurants or trades people, sell items or discuss topics of mutual interest. Basically, many of the things that used to take place over the garden fence.
We can also make it easy for you to interact with your development’s management, be it the residents’ committee, developer or management company.
I think there is a lot of business potential in a social network for apartment builings and condos and actually posted an idea that I was thinking of developing back in January. I didn't know that someone had already done it! You can read about it here: http://www.toolazytodoit.com/2009/01/a-social-network-for-condos.html
Thanks, Paolo