As Lovely continues to grow, co-founder Blake Pierson was named to SF Business Times' 40 under 40. 

Lovely, the US-only app that helps you find your dream apartment, has announced it’s introducing a new automated rent-payment feature for the Web, iOS and Android.

In a property market where decent rentals can be in short supply, mobile apps could give apartment hunters an advantage in a competitive search. Lovely, an iPhone app, notifies apartment hunters when a listing is posted that matches their desired neighborhood and price point. It also lets potential renters attach information about their income, credit score and desired move-in date.

And, as anyone living here knows, finding an affordable apartment in this city can be, well, a nightmare. Given how competitive apartment hunting often proves to be, one of Lovely’s features is particularly useful – a pre-configured message you can send to the landlord asking when you can see the apartment.

When you're looking for a new place to live, you probably typically search Craigslist or Trulia or something similar, but Lovely is a little bit different in that it lets you set up alerts that include price range, number of bedrooms, and neighborhood, down to a radius of a few blocks. If a crib comes up, you'll get an email or a push notification.

Finding an apartment in San Francisco can be harder than finding a job. Just ask Gavin McDermott, 29. He and his girlfriend, Erica Cohen, 28, are moving to San Francisco from Arizona. After investigating listing sites, they settled on Lovely's www.LiveLovely.com, because they liked its smartphone app, ability to customize searches, and instant alerts for new listings. In fact, McDermott liked the site so much that he contacted the South of Market company behind it about open positions and got hired as a software engineer. But they're still searching for a place to live.

Lovely, based in San Francisco, aims to replace Craigslist as the go-to place to find an apartment and is free for renters and landlords. Renters can even set up a profile called a renter card with their qualifications that they can send to prospective landlords.