If you have ever tried to rent a home, you know just how annoying it can be. First, you need to weed through the thousands of different listings and once you decide where you want to live, there is still a lot of paperwork such as submitting personal information, checking credit and more.
Not only that, but the whole long-term rental industry seems to be stuck in the past. While technology has disrupted and innovated various different industries, this is not one of them. The process still involves searching through classified ads that have no actionable capabilities, so a lengthy email or phone conversation is still necessary. Also, many agents or brokers may charge huge fees for doing barely any work.
So as you can see, the rental industry is in desperate need of some innovation, and one company/platform that is trying to provide that is Rentberry. This article will look at what they do, how the platform works, the team behind it and more.
What is Rentberry?
Rentberry is a full-transparent home rental service that is based on the blockchain. It streamlines the rental process for both renters and landlords as it automates many of the standard rental tasks. These include signing rental agreements, making payments, sending personal information and more.
Rentberry was founded back in 2015 and since then, they have processed over 4,000 applications, have almost a quarter of a million properties listed, and are up and running in nearly 5,000 cities.
Also, Rentberry serves as a pricing negotiation platform to ensure both sides can come to a fair and verifiable agreement. By using smart contracts, Rentberry also includes other impressive features, which we will now take a look at.
The Features of Rentberry
There are plenty of Rentberry features that are worth talking about. All of which help this platform to be one of the most exciting and innovative in the space. One of the most unique features about this platform is the crowdsourced rental deposits. Members who use Rentberry are able to cover a portion of another user’s rental deposit in exchange for 3-7% interest. So not only are you making a little bit of money, but you are also helping someone else be able to secure a nice place to rent.
Another innovative feature is the transparent application process. This process creates a healthy rental environment in which all potential tenants can send public and customized offers to landlords. This ensures everything is fair and everyone knows how much they should offer thanks to knowledge of their competition. This takes place in an auction format, as opposed to standard listings. Most traditional rental negotiations take place in private, and this public system seems to be a more fair way to do things.
In addition to those, there are several different features that are great for both tenants and landlords. Tenants are able to know about their competition and can be shown things like their offer, credit score, and more. Tenants will also be able to make payments online through the platform and you can also conveniently split rent with roommates. There is also no need to sign a paper contract, as everything can be signed online. Maintenance requests and house tours can also be handled right in the platform too.
Landlords are able to easily and quickly add a property as well as share the listing themselves, but also through the many partner websites of Rentberry. Screening tenants is also incredibly easy on Rentberry so you will be able to see their credit, their offer as well as a background and criminal check. You can also schedule open houses in seconds with ease.
If you want to learn more about the features of Rentberry or dive deeper into how the platform works and operates, be sure to check out their whitepaper.
BERRY
The utility token for Rentberry is called BERRY. It is an ERC20 token that is the exclusive payment method on the platform. Landlords will collect rent via these tokens and it can be spent on a variety of Rentberry services. Of course, the tokens can also be traded, bought and sold on the open market like traditional investments, as well.
The Rentberry team held their ICO recently and it just ended at the start of March. Over $27 million was raised during the ICO (in addition to the $4 million they raised in a seed round) and over 300 million total BERRY tokens were issued. 70% of the total token supply was sent out in the ICO, 20% will go to the company reserve and 10% will go to the team.
The Team at Rentberry
The team at Rentberry is made up of 23 people that have well over 100 years of collective experience. They are led by Alex Lubinsky, Denis Golubovskiy and Lily Ostapchuk. Lubinsky is the CEO of the company and has owned a lot of real estate and has sold several other businesses he was involved in. Golubovskiy is the CTO and has nearly a decade of experience in engineering and development. Ostapchuk is the CPO of the company and has 10 year of experience in product and marketing.
In addition to this strong leadership, the team features several blockchain, frontend and backend developers, engineers and designers who all have the goal of making this platform and idea a success.
In conclusion, Rentberry is hoping to become the future of long-term renting. They have already been active for a few years, have had a successful ICO and seem to provide the solution to many of the biggest problems faced by the industry today. Only time will tell if they become successful, but they seem to be on the right track and definitely offer something we haven’t seen in the market yet.
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