Sex & Relationships

The site that lets you rent only from hotties

Mover over, Airbnb: LoveRoom is coming.

The new site promises to be a blend of the popular dating Web site Tinder and Airbnb, which allows you to rent rooms in your apartment. Like Airbnb, LoveRoom is geared toward renting rooms. But it also aims to help people find cute singletons with whom they’d like to share more than just a bathroom.

LoveRoom, which launches in beta next week, is similar to a standard dating site in that it allows one to search for people by age range, location, gender and sexual preference. Once a user finds someone who strikes his or her fancy, he or she can rent a room from that person. Since the site’s home page launched six days ago, it’s received more than 800 sign-ups, many of them New Yorkers.

“I was wondering if people would rent a place just because a person looks good,” says founder Joshua Bocanegra of his inspiration to create the site. “Me and my girlfriend use Airbnb when we rent our space. I put her picture on there — she doesn’t know how to use it. That means guys might want to book with us for an extra reason — namely, she’s attractive. We’ve been getting a lot of bookings.”

Although Airbnb has a picture function, Bocanegra, who works full-time for a music startup, says the main benefit of LoveRoom is that it helps tailor searches in ways Airbnb can’t.

“With LoveRoom you’ll find people who are single. You can select by age range,” he says. “If you’re traveling you can say you want to stay with someone who is 25 to 30. LoveRoom also allows you to search by sexual preference.”

Just like a dating Web site — except Match and OkCupid don’t encourage you to go to someone’s house alone on a first date. The probability that users could experience unwanted advances certainly seems higher than meeting an interested party in a public coffee shop.

Park Slope resident Meghan O’Keefe, for one, is enthusiastic. “As someone who finds it very difficult to find a nice, attractive person in New York — who also finds me attractive — there’s a practicality to the idea,” says the 28-year-old comedian.

Some Airbnb pros are more skeptical. Says tech journalist and Airbnb user Seth Porges, “If LoveRoom is even real — and I’m not totally convinced it’s anything more than an attention-getting digital art project — they’re going to have serious issues. I can’t imagine they’re going to be able to maintain a viable inventory of hosts.”

The 30-year-old Williamsburg resident adds that, if a host turns out to be creepy, the guests are likely to disappear — for good.

“The only reason Airbnb works is because hosts tend to have a positive enough experience that they keep their listings up for long periods of time,” notes Porges. “As somebody with a listing on Airbnb, the prospect of putting my apartment on a site that caters to people who might be interested in more than just my room’s amenities is quite disturbing.”

Indeed. Who knows who’s behind the door of the place you’re renting?

Bocanegra admits that problems could arise and is trying to find a way to deal with them. “We’ll have to cover a lot of legal aspects,” he says. “But right now, we’re kind of acting as an add-on to Airbnb. So you have to have an Airbnb account and submit a link to it to use the site.”

That would be comforting, except Airbnb does not routinely perform background checks (although people can flag suspicious users on the site).

“We’re thinking of adding something where you can scan your actual ID, so the police would have users’ information available,” adds Bocanegra.

Gird your loins.