IT’S THE Uber of renting.

The latest Silicon Valley tech disrupter is reportedly on its way down under, and tenants should be nervous.

Rentberry is a controversial app that already operates in the United States, which allows house hunters to bid for rental properties in an online auction format.

And while the two-year-old real estate start-up bills itself as a one-stop shop that aims to make the rental process smoother for all involved, tenant advocates fear it will push up prices in an already competitive market.

“It doesn’t bode well for our housing system and particularly for people who are already doing it tough to keep up with the game,” Tenants Union of NSW spokesman Ned Cutcher told news.com.au, calling for a blanket ban on rent bidding — which he said was already happening in the competitive Sydney market.

“I can’t see how it would be anything but a bad thing for the rental market from a tenant’s perspective.”

He said that while those who could afford to offer “a little bit extra” to secure a property were the winners in a rental auction, it was unfair to people on lower incomes — who struggled to find a decent place to live.

“The idea that you can turn a bad idea and make it good by offering some kind of transparent process around it, is not something I’m convinced by,” Mr Cutcher said.

“Our government and regulators may feel like they’ve done enough to prevent or discourage this kind of thing, but the fact that we’re seeing something like the Rentberry app being rolled out prompts a broader conversation about what is actually happening.”

Rentberry is about to launch the initial, $1.57 million phase of its global expansion, and co-founder Alex Lubinsky has flagged Australia as one of its key target markets.

The app is expected to launch first in Sydney and then in Melbourne, within the next few months.

Mr Lubinsky has said that the system does not simply prioritise applicants who can pay more, saying the app’s built-in credit check and referencing system aimed to help landlords find the best tenant available.

“People say we create competition, but competition already exists,” he told the BBC, adding that “only the market” can suggest what is a fair price for a property.

“There is always controversy when there is something new — some people act with fear [because] they still have not understood it,” Mr Lubinsky told Fairfax Media.

“When Uber came out, people said it was stealing taxi jobs, they don’t have insurance, many things, but we all know now [these] companies bought huge positive change.”

He argued that the app would bring transparency to the market, and claimed that the company’s US data revealed that “we actually save money of about 5.12 per cent for tenants.” It is worth noting that the US is a nation with an oversupply of apartments.

Not everyone is predicting a price crunch, though; economist Sara Ellison has argued that there is no economic reason why sites that allow people to bid on rentals would necessarily drive up prices, telling the Washington Post that bidding “is actually good for markets where there isn’t much information about the price of an item”, such as in rural towns.

dana.mccauley@news.com.au