This young CEO is using tech to make housing more accessible

Openigloo CEO Allia Mohamed talks to Zivvy News about her mission to bring transparency to the housing market

In June, Allia Mohamed joined a group of New Yorkers to testify in support of the Fairness in Apartment Rental Expenses (FARE) Act. This legislation aims to prohibit landlords across New York City from requiring tenants to pay broker fees unless the tenant specifically hires the broker. “A one- or two-month broker fee on top of moving costs is simply a financial impossibility for many New Yorkers,” Mohamed stated in her testimony.

The bill, introduced by 26-year-old councilmember Chi Ossé, passed the City Council in November and is scheduled to go into effect in the summer of 2025.

But Mohamed wasn’t just speaking as a renter navigating New York City’s notoriously expensive and challenging housing market. She is also the founder and CEO of OpenIgloo, an app directly inspired by her own experience as a tenant. 

At the time, Mohamed was living in a Brooklyn apartment owned by what she describes as a neglectful landlord. Finding that apartment wasn’t easy either—especially as a Canadian who didn’t meet many landlords’ requirements for U.S. credit and rental history.

“When I was looking for my next apartment, I really wanted to do more due diligence on both the building and the landlord,” Mohamed recalls. “But I was really disappointed with the lack of resources to do that, so I went very low-tech. I started standing outside of buildings I was considering, waiting for people walking in and out, stopping them on the sidewalk, and saying, ‘Hey, do you live here? How's the landlord? Should I move in?’”

That experience motivated Mohamed to partner with a former graduate school classmate to create an app that would streamline the process. Their mission: to bring more transparency to the housing market by enabling renters to research landlords, review buildings, and find apartments without the risk of drastic rent hikes.

Since launching OpenIgloo in 2020, Mohamed has learned that housing inaccessibility—especially in large metropolitan markets—goes beyond high costs. Complex laws and regulations, often rife with loopholes, play a significant role as well.

“In New York City, the majority of buildings will have multiple addresses associated with the building,” she explains. “The renter knows one address, right? Because the renter is putting that address for their deliveries and sending mails from that consumer-facing address. But then, there's the address that the city uses in their registrations.”

This discrepancy, Mohamed says, can create a disconnect between a building’s record of complaints, violations, or issues like bed bug infestations. Such inconsistencies don’t just harm tenants, but can also hurt law-abiding landlords—especially smaller ones who own just one or a few properties.

Looking ahead, Mohamed plans to expand OpenIgloo to other cities, recognizing that housing transparency is not an issue unique to New York. “This is a pain point renters feel universally,” she notes. In fact, the app’s name was inspired by the universality of the word “igloo.” “I really liked the diversity element of the word,” she says. “It’s not like casa or maison or some other word for house, but igloo—in every language—is igloo.”