RentHoop

It’s an awkward combination of two seemingly unrelated words. In fact, the combination seems to be so unnatural that, without the capital “H”, people’s first instinct is to pronounce it as “Ren-thoop.”

So why in the world would I name my roommate-finding app this mishmash of a phrase?

The idea behind the name came from the greater vision of the app: You shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to rent an apartment.

It’s a simple enough concept, and, in a time when half of Americans under 30 are renting, there should already be standard tools to manage everything that renting an apartment encompasses, right?

In my experience, not quite.

It all started at the end of 2013, when I was studying at Western Washington University. I joined my buddy’s start-up called SimplyRent, an apartment-finding platform that gained some notoriety in our college town of Bellingham, Washington. Like many young, eager entrepreneurs, we made our fair share of mistakes, and the start-up died.

But it was during my time with SimplyRent that I was first introduced to the complexities of renting. Through dozens of conversations with landlords, property managers and tenants, I came to understand the plethora of issues surrounding the leasing of apartments. One of the most significant problems I encountered concerned the safety of the properties. A few tenants even fell ill due to a landlord’s negligence (which seems to be a recurring problem, years after I’ve graduated).

So, I decided to start a list of “rental reviews,” in which tenants could document compliments or grievances with the property management companies- a Yelp for apartments, if you will. As ambitious as this idea was, I quickly realized that it was not viable at a large scale and would cause more headaches than it would cure. Still, the underlying concept of transparency has stuck with me after all of these years….. But more on that later.

As SimplyRent ended, I dreamt up a new idea in the rental space. I had spent months studying the rental landscape and learning about the pervasive problems in the industry. With these issues in mind, I conceptualized “Tinder for Finding Roommates.” It was catchy, simple, unique, and specifically aimed at solving one of the biggest problems renters have: finding a roommate.

Over the years, I saw many rental websites and apps come and go. This ancient post by @aurence on HackerNews beautifully describes the problems most rental sites run into:

Over the past 21 years, I’ve seen numerous startups come into the business hoping to have no fee listings supported by ads. But the reality is a horse before the cart problem. Few landlords spend money on advertising. Those that do, only spend money if there is traffic to their buildings and clicks on their ads. A startup rarely has sufficient renter traffic to make advertising a viable model to cover the costs.”

In addition, getting landlords to adopt technology isn’t exactly easy, resulting in extremely high acquisition costs and long sales cycles.

The big problem is getting the information from landlords. The vast number of landlords in NYC are small landlords who are usually tech-phobic. There are many landlords who do not even have email!! Tons of landlords don’t have a website. Many of those that have websites don’t display their listings. And many landlords who have websites with listings posted don’t keep them up to date. So there are only so many landlords that can be updated by scraping websites.

Simply put, landlords are stuck in their ways. There are 23 million of them, they’re hard to reach, and with the demands for rentals rising, it’s not absolutely necessary to pay for advertising their properties in cities with high occupancy rates.

While the bigger landlords and property managers are slowly adapting to shifts towards technology, smaller landlords are still using paper for most of the rental process. Applications and leases are mostly non-digital even though 88% of renters would find and apply to a property online without even seeing it in person. Even checks remain the preferred method for landlords to collect rent. All these processes can and will be digitized. There are so many hoops to jump through to rent an apartment. RentHoop makes a bit more sense now, right?

Bundling all the tools that are lacking and selling them to landlords is a capital-intensive endeavor that doesn’t fit with the lean methodology I believe in.

That makes roommates the perfect blue-ocean. We’re catering to an underserved niche of renters that is generally made up of a younger audience more open to new technology, and who don’t have access to modern solutions when searching for roommates. Subsequently building some of those tools on top of our roommate-finding platform made more sense from day one.

Roommates were always the start. They were never the end-all, be-all. They were the first step in creating the best rental ecosystem in the world — one that abstracts Craigslist creepiness, can be trusted, and is social.

With the rise of blockchain technology, we’re continuing to streamline the rental process. But, the mission has actually reverted to two of my original motives: bringing transparency to the fragmented, chaos-filled rental market and reducing friction between renters and landlords.

The blockchain will enable us to reduce shitty behavior, from both landlords and renters, and provide the proper incentives that reward the best renters and landlords in the ecosystem.

Here’s the scenario: You’ve paid rent, through an ecosystem built on the blockchain, always on time, for 24 straight months. Not only are you rewarded RntX tokens for each on-time payment, but your track-record of being a great tenant will give you leverage to pay less rent through lease concessions and landlords competing for your tenantship in the future.

A credit score cannot do that. A RentalScore, can.

We’re reimagining renting. Join us.

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RentHoop is a mobile app for finding roommates and rooms on iOS and Android phones. We were recently named one of the Most Promising Housing Apps to Watch in 2018 by Forbes and graduated from the Startup Boost (November, 2017) program in Los Angeles.

RntX is our budding endeavor to build a transparent and decentralized rental ecosystem. Sign up to for exclusive updates on RntX.io and join our Telegram channel.