This Blockchain Company Aims To Be The eBay Of Rental Properties

The real estate rental market is booming. While this is fantastic news for landlords, it means tenants are paying higher fees than ever.
Though many platforms have already emerged to stabilize the situation, they have ultimately failed to do enough to fully rectify the problem.

The Big Problem With Our Current Rental Market

The traditional rental market operates via an outdated classified advertising system. Think Craigslist, for example. While this application is simple and easy to use, the fact of the matter is that it just doesn’t provide enough information.

In most cases, it’s a good deal for landlords. But for tenants, it’s a different story.

Before the process even begins, tenants are required to pay the initial funds and prerequisites. Then there is the intimidating process of getting a good apartment and negotiating the cost. Overall, it creates an unfavorable rental experience for both the parties.

Unnecessary involvement of third parties can make the process even costlier than expected, and it’s a common occurrence for tenants to get hit with unexpected fees that they can’t afford.

Overcoming The Problem Using Blockchain Technology 

The real estate industry is booming, and interest in cryptocurrency and blockcahin is growing each day. It was only a matter of time before these concept merged together to create something entirely novel and perhaps revolutionary.

Alex Lubinsky, the founder of Rentberry, has spent a significant amount of time studying the rental market of San Francisco.

Lubinsky believes that the implementation of blockchain technology will send an unexpected tremor through the rental industry. This is why he launched Rentberry as a low-impact solution to this problem — an online rental marketplace that harnesses and modernizes the overall process of renting a property. Lubinsky has also stated that the new blockchain based rental system has actually lowered the rents across competitive markets like New York City and San Francisco.

How Would a Decentralized Rental System Work?

This decentralized rental model links up the landowners and tenants on a single platform by completely eradicating the third party, thus reducing the overall cost of renting process.

The model is simple: landlords put up their property listing, and tenants make bids depending on the supply, demand, and competition for a specific property.

All the properties listed by landowners and the applications submitted by renters will be available on Rentberry website, which becomes a base for both the parties to complete all rent-related tasks online.

Properties that are being placed on an auctioning protocol provide increased transparency for renters. They can make bids according to how much they are willing to pay.

Furthermore, tenants can also provide reviews on the property after they move out. Following these reviews, properties will be tagged with ratings. This provides a smart mechanism for selecting the potential properties which have derived from the number of key factors.

Using smart contracts to complete rental property tasks means all the specifications from tenants and landlords can be more effectively addressed, and that no query will be left unsolved.

Is the Idea Really Feasible?

Rentberry has already raised $4M through seed funding from high profile investors and VC funds from 11 countries. So far it has over 120k users and 224k properties.

Tokenizing the tenant’s security fund will also allow investors to earn rewards for their contributions. Since the platform is based on ERC-20 Ethereum-based smart contract, it creates advanced security and transparency.

Overall, Lubinsky's goal with Rentberry is to create a fully transparent process through a decentralized network and enable security deposits to be crowd sourced with instant rental payment systems.

Current market response to RB’s blockchain iteration looks positive. As its functionality grows to further incorporate the unbiased and cost-effective utility of a blockchain framework, renters and landlords could be in store for a wholly new ecosystem in which to conduct business.