Traditional rental search strategies by prospective tenants includes searching classified ads in newspapers and using online sites like Craigslist, Zillow, Rightmove and Zoopla which provide limited information about a particular property and essentially no support for actionable items, such as the application process, contract execution, rent collection, and maintenance requests. Many tasks still need to be done manually before a successful rental agreement is in place. Additionally, agents and brokers sometimes charge significant fees for minimal services, and landlords force tenants to freeze thousands of dollars in rental security deposits.

Rentberry was founded at the end of 2015. Its goal is to enable both landlords and tenants to enjoy a fully decentralized rental process that includes an open and transparent application process, crowd-sourced security deposit networks, and instant rent payments. Rentberry will leverage blockchain technology to ensure the entire rental application and rental contracts process can be completed online.

Rentberry already goes beyond a vision and a roadmap found in most ICO whitepapers with an established product. A live platform with more than 120,000 users and 224,000 properties already catalogued. Angel and institutional investors have provided $4 million in start-up funds. Additionally, Rentberry has forged partnerships with Move Inc. (owner of realtor.com), Coinfirm (Anti-Money Laundering Platform) and HelloSign (electronic signatures).

The Benefits of Rentberry

The costs and characteristics of housing vary across the world but residents in different countries experience the same problems when renting. Rentberry will establish internationally valid tenant and landlord scores.

Rentberry’s proprietary Auctioning Technology reduces traditional frustrations, scam rates, time delays, and friction points in the rental process to benefit both tenants and landlords. The transparent ecosystem with verified information on renters and landlords fosters a mutual level of trust between the parties.

The Auctioning Technology acts as a “pricing oracle” and is part of Rentberry’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP), which allows tenants to bid, sign legal rental documents, and settle payments using BERRY tokens, all using the Rentberry website or mobile app.

Using BERRY tokens, landlords can promote listings on Rentberry.com or syndicate to additional rental sites for increased reach and visibility.

The platform allows for users to search for properties, filter the results based on a number of criteria (e.g. location, size, price, preferred amenities) and display detailed results relating to each listed property.

Tenants can securely and safely execute a legal contract which is signed by the parties using their blockchain keys/identities and then immutably store that contract on the blockchain. This can be done in seconds without wasting paper or time.

As an example of how Rentberry works using its tokens, it offers this example in its white paper (p. 16): Tenants win a bid for a rental unit. They will have to pay 1,000 BERRY tokens per application to give the landlord access to their own data and facilitate the winning bid. If the landlord selects that tenant, 950 of the 1,000 BERRY tokens will be automatically distributed to the landlord via smart contract to be applied to the first month’s rent or to the security deposit as determined by the landlord and tenant. The remaining 50 BERRY tokens will be retained by Rentberry as a fee for the services being provided. Rentberry currently charges ~$25 (a flat fee) when apartment bidders sign their lease. Unsuccessful applicants are not charged any BERRY tokens and all tokens will be returned to the would be tenants’ wallet.

All of this activity will be managed by smart contracts. Rentberry plans to allow tenants to make their rental payments in BERRY tokens starting in 2018. The risk of any fraudulent activity will be minimized as all payments will be recorded on a permanent ledger. All requests will be stored in the system and will be able to be accessed at any time in case of disputes in the future.

The Rentberry Token

The goal of the Rentberry’s token sale is to convert their existing business into a decentralized token ecosystem that will reduce the time and expense of completing rental agreements. It will also provide the company capital for growing the business internationally. BERRY tokens will be issued on the Ethereum blockchain under either the ERC-20 or ERC-223 token standard. The token price for the ICO is set at: 1 ETH = 2,500 BERRY.

Initially 400 million BERRY tokens are available during the Token Sale. To participate in the Token Sale, visit ico.Rentberry.com to register for the Cryptonomos book building portal. Once registered, buyers can purchase BERRY tokens using Ethereum or Bitcoin. The Rentberry Token Sale will take place from December 5th 2017 until February 28th 2018.

The Risks to Rentberry

Rentberry presents a unique ICO with its linkage between its platform, token and community. The success of Rentberry lies with its ability to attract and maintain coin users (renters) over time. If few renters and landlords adopt Rentberry then the token price may deflate slowly over time due to lack of token demand. BERRY tokens have a primary function for use when bidding and paying rent; those not renting may see little value in buying and holding BERRY tokens as a speculative investment once the platform becomes established.

Using a transparent auction-style bidding platform may actually increase rents in hot markets through intense bidding; however, there is little hard evidence to support this idea. Economist Sara Ellison argues that there is no economic reason why sites that allow people to bid on rentals would necessarily drive up prices.

And even though the CEO affirms that the site requires bidders to submit personal information such as their social security number in order to take part in an auction – an effort to stop people trying to drive up the cost with false bids is difficult. The platform may still be easily “gamed” by unscrupulous landlords who use third party contacts to surreptitiously drive bids up.

Finally, Rentberry may face some opposition from current business management structures, due to the overlay of traditional business practices and government rental-legal oversight in the housing sector.

Summary

Rentberry brings together tenants and landlords using a decentralized “ebay-style” auction bidding platform. It simplifies the rental process with a more complete online property management solution built on the blockchain. The company offers an innovative technology that will simplify the rental process globally.

Rentberry with an established product and international growth prospects reduces its overall risk as an ICO. Anyone interested in renting or longer term token growth will be interested in BERRY.

Website: https://Rentberry.com/

Whitepaper: https://Rentberry.cryptonomos.com/downloads/Rentberry_Whitepaper_en.pdf