The long-term rental market is enormous. Right now, there are over 2 billion people living in long-term rentals throughout the world.
Craigslist has long since cemented itself as one of the main websites for buyers to search for long-term rentals. It’s easy to understand why – an average of 80 million ads are posted on the website every single month.
However, the current system is rife with problems. Websites such as Craigslist aren’t designed specifically to cater towards the long-term rental market, and their lax regulations mean apartment rental scams are common – particularly in highly sought-after areas. As a result, people all over the world are being scammed out of thousands.
But things could be about to change dramatically…
Rentberry is the new blockchain startup that could be set to completely revolutionize the rental industry. It’s been around for a couple of years already, but the team behind the platform are already underway with planning the next step.
Filling the Need for Long-Term Apartment Rental Using Smart Contracts
Despite recent major advances in industries such as social media and transportation that have been enabled by blockchain, the long-term rental industry has seen little innovation over the past few years.
Rentberry was born out of frustration when its founders’ search for a rental property in San Francisco shed light on how inefficient, costly and obscure the rental process was.
The team found that when applying and making offers for different properties, it became very difficult to understand where they stood in the process compared to other applicants.
Moreover, once they actually found somewhere to live, they had to freeze thousands of dollars as part of a security deposit, despite their excellent credit reports. For many people, this is a huge problem and makes it incredibly difficult for them to find a place to live.
However, this could be about to change. Rentberry serves as a decentralized long-term rental ecosystem. It has been specially designed to solve the major problems so often faced by both tenants and landlord.
Their goal is ultimately to make the rental process more transparent, convenient, and secure, while also reducing the cost.
A Platform That Benefits Both Tenants and Landlords
The platform is designed to make the process more transparent for both tenants and landlords.
Rentberry enables landlords to screen tenants, share and advertise their properties, sign e-agreements, and collect their rent online.
For tenants, activities that were previously tedious and cumbersome can now be completed quickly and without hassle.
For example, the platform allows users to complete property application processes, sign agreements, pay rent and make maintenance requests online.
A Solution to Empower Migrants, and Simplify the Process of Raising Rental Security Deposits
Rentberry features a crowdsourced security deposit mechanism that will allow tenants from all around the world to unfreeze the $500 billion that is currently blocked in rental security deposits. In this method, tenants will be given the option to pay only 10% of their security posit.
The rest of the required fee can then be crowdsourced by the rest of the community. In return for their contributions, Rentberry users will be rewarded in the form of a small interest rate paid by the tenant.
For example, instead of a tenant having to fork out $2,000 upfront for a security deposit, they will now only be required to pay $200 upfront – a much more manageable amount. They will then only have to pay a small figure to those who backed them each month.
Last but not least, the platform also standardizes the rental process across borders. This fantastic news for expats and migrants, as it puts them on equal footing with others when living in a country other than their own throughout the rental process.
The Reinvention of Rentberry is Already Underway – and Their ICO is Starting Soon
One of the major things that makes Rentberry stand out from other ICOs is that they already have a fully functioning platform. Founded back in 2015, it is already up and running in several major cities in the US, including New York, Miami, and Boston.
As of today, it has more than 120,000 users and features more than 224,000 properties.
The team behind the platform are hoping that this update will make the platform more accessible, and open up new possibilities for their user base.
Rentberry’s token pre-sale will begin on the 5th December. As of right now, the team has already raised over $4 million in seed funding from high-profile investors and VC funds from 11 different countries.
It is hoped that Rentberry will ultimately be the solution that makes renting a simpler, more transparent process for both landowners and renters alike.
