Rentberry-whitepaper

58 Pages·2020·13.38 MB·English

A Decentralized Global Home
Rental Platform Whitepaper

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

1.1 Foreword

1.2 Highlights of Rentberry’s Ongoing Business

1.3 Company Background

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Rentberry Explained

2.1 What is Rentberry?

2.2 The World Needs Rentberry: Here’s Why

2.3 Open and Transparent Rental Platform

2.4 Benefits for Landlords & Tenants

Key Advantages

3.1 Unique Features

3.1.1 Auctioning Technology

3.1.2 Crowdsourced Rental Deposit Network

3.1.3 Proprietary Scoring System

3.1.4 Rent Payments

3.2 Additional Services

3.2.1 Third Party Service Providers

3.2.2 Utility Bills Payments

3.3 Ongoing Research

3.4 The Power of Data

Blockchain Technology and Smart Contracts

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2.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Token Launch

6.1 Token Sale Overview

6.2 Bonus for Large Purchasers

6.3 Token Sale Structure

6.3.1 Token Sale Procedure and Allocation

6.3.2 Rentberry Reserve

6.4 Budget Allocation Overview

6.5 Risks to Participating in the Token Sale

Expansion & Marketing Strategy

7.1 Expansion Plan

7.2 30-Month Roadmap

6.

7.

Conclusion

Legal Disclaimer

Source Material

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Team and Progress

5.1 Team

5.2 Our Track Record

5.3 Prominent Investors

5.4 Advisors

5.5 Status Quo & Timeline

5.

“Blockchain technology and the utility token
ecosystem are the two pillars that will turn our
transparent rental platform into a global one.”

1. Introduction

Rentberry is on a positive trajectory in the long-term rental platform space. We already have

more than 120,000 users and 224,000 properties on our platform and have raised $4 million

in funds from highly respected angel and institutional investors. Unlike many blockchain start-

ups, we already have an established business which goes beyond a vision and a roadmap.

Since the latest version of our platform went live in early 2017, the media has referred to us as

a truly disruptive real estate technology. This has resulted in requests from around the globe

asking when our services and technology will become available on an international basis.

The goal of the Rentberry token sale (“Token Sale”) is to convert our business into a truly

decentralized token ecosystem that will reduce the time and expense of long-term rentals for

everyone involved, and provide the capital which will allow us to address the growing

international demand for Rentberry’s services.

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1.1 Foreword

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Total number of properties that were shown on the platform from January 1, 2017 until November 8, 2017.

Number of unique users who initiated sessions on rentberry.com website within selected time period.

1.2 Highlights of Rentberry’s Ongoing Business

53% m/m
23 people

$4M

2015
224,000+

4,948

150
4,000+

Active User Growth:
Team:

Capital Raised:

Founded:
Listed Properties:

Cities:

Combined Years of Experience:
Applications Processed:

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(Q3 2017)

“In contrast to many other companies launching token
sales, we already have a functioning platform.”

1.3 Company Background

We founded Rentberry at the end of 2015 after our founders spent almost a month searching

for rental properties in San Francisco, California. We experienced the frustration involved with

submitting rental applications, enduring bidding wars with other prospective tenants and

going through uncomfortable face-to-face negotiations with landlords.

We consistently lost apartments to other applicants because of the lack of transparency in the

rental process as we had no idea if there were other applicants who were willing to offer more

than the original asking price established by landlords. Moreover, once we rented an

apartment, we had to freeze thousands of dollars for a rental deposit even though we had

excellent credit reports, employment histories and references.

The time-consuming, costly and unnerving process of finding an apartment made us question

the efficiency of the traditional long-term rental process. With our founders having lived and

worked on two different continents and having seed round investors from 11 different

countries, we know firsthand that the same problems with long-term rentals exist not just in

the U.S. but at an international level. Promotions of long-term rental properties offer no real

value to users other than pictures and descriptions of the properties. Rentberry, however, is

working on a technology that will unite tenants and landlords and simplify the rental process

with a more complete online property management solution built on the blockchain.

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2. Rentberry Explained

Rentberry is a decentralized long-term rental ecosystem that will use blockchain technology to

make the rental process less costly and more convenient and secure. The transparent

ecosystem with verified information on renters and landlords fosters trust between the parties.

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. Also, the

Rentberry ecosystem will offer the ability for community members to help back quality tenants,

unfreezing millions of dollars tied up rental deposits in the process.

Although the costs and characteristics of housing vary across the world, residents of many

countries experience the same problems in the long-term rental space. Rentberry’s mission is

to offer a solution that will be equally efficient for residents across international borders.

Technological evolution has led to the disruption of multiple sectors in recent years. The long

term (six months and longer) rental industry has remained relatively stagnant.

Despite so many other industries having been successfully disrupted in recent years (retail,

social media, transportation), the long-term property rental space remains mired in tradition

and lacks comparable innovation. The process of long-term rentals still results in frustration

and lost time for both the owners of rental properties who are looking for additional income

and potential tenants who are looking for a place to call home. There has not yet been

technological disruption significant enough to usher in a new—and better—way to rent. Here

at Rentberry, we aim to change that.

Global practices still include listings in the form of simple classified ads in print publications

2.1. What is Rentberry?

2.2. The World Needs Rentberry: Here’s Why

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or on sites like Craigslist, Zillow, Rightmove and Zoopla which provide limited information

about a particular property for prospective tenants and essentially no support for actionable

items, such as the application process, contract execution, rent collection, and maintenance

requests. Today, Rentberry offers users a fully operational, web-based long-term rental

platform. Our goal is to leverage blockchain technology to ensure a seamless rental

experience which will allow the entire rental application and rental contracts process to be

completed quickly and online.

It is still common practice to complete many tasks manually. This includes calling or emailing

prospective tenants, manually screening applicants, and accepting paper checks or cash for

rent payments. In addition, agents and brokers sometimes charge significant fees for minimal

services, and landlords force tenants to freeze thousands of dollars in rental deposits.

International renters face problems qualifying to rent overseas as their credit scores and credit

histories are only valid in their country of citizenship or in the country in which they are legally

qualified to work and live in at the moment.

Meanwhile, renting has become an economic and lifestyle choice for 41% of Americans, 55.5%

of the Swiss, and 39.9% of Germans, to name just a few countries. Currently, there are over

641 million rental units worldwide and around 2.3 billion people living in long-term rentals.

According to the most recent statistics from the UN, there are over 244 million international

migrants living worldwide, which creates a large pool of potential users who are likely to

benefit from a transparent universal rental platform.

According to a recent Harvard University study, long-term rental behavior has increased

among all income groups, age groups, and household types. According to projections by the

Urban Institute, as many as 59% of new households to be formed by 2030 will be renting

homes instead of buying them. Renting has become the new normal and we believe this trend

will continue to hold true for other countries around the world.

Using Rentberry, landlords and tenants in countries across the globe will have the opportunity

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to enjoy a transparent and universally applicable platform for long-term rentals. Rentberry will:

This makes Rentberry the first company in the long-term residential real estate space that will

strive to operate internationally and ensure a fair, frictionless, and seamless long-term rental

process for all parties involved.

We already have a functional platform and marketplace with actual users and properties that

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Eliminate the need for the agent/broker model (and associated expenses) by allowing

landlords and tenants to complete all rental tasks online in a peer to peer manner;

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Establish a uniform international standard of rental procedures that will benefit expats

and migrants living and working in new countries; and

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Provide a crowdsourced rental deposit network that will allow tenants to reduce the

amount of their own money they need tie up in their rental deposits.

Rentberry will use blockchain technology to streamline the entire long-term rental process by

making it possible for tenants and landlords to complete all rental tasks in one place. These

tasks include:

2.3. Open and Transparent Rental Platform

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Searching for properties;

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Making offers / bids via the Rentberry auctioning platform;

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Screening prospects;

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Selecting the best / most suitable candidates;

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Negotiating the terms;

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Unlocking rental deposits;

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E-signing contracts;

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Paying rent;

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Submitting maintenance requests;

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Hiring third-party service providers (e.g., handymen and plumbers); and

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Enabling landlords to stay connected with tenants.

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allow for some of these transactions. Our active user traffic has grown 53%+ month on month

during Q3 2017.

In the future, we plan to decentralize and fully automate the tasks listed above using

blockchain technology powered by our BERRY token.

Tenants will have free access to view rental listings on the platform as will single-family

homeowners with up to three properties. Large volume landlords (those with more than three

properties under management), such as real estate corporations, brokerage firms and

property management companies, will have to pay only 150 BERRY tokens (i.e., expected to

be approximately $30 USD) per month if they choose to manage more than three properties

on the platform simultaneously.

Duplicated efforts, protracted bureaucratic processes and financial friction are common

friction points within the long-term rental market. Rentberry’s platform benefits landlords and

tenants as follows:

2.4 Benefits for Landlords and Tenants

a. Landlords

Listing Marketing & Syndication

Landlord benefits will include the ability to list any property on the platform with a specified

asking price and include detailed information on the given rental unit. Using BERRY tokens,

landlords can promote listings on rentberry.com or syndicate to additional rental sites for

increased reach and visibility. The fee for property promotion will be dynamic and will depend

on the number of other landlords promoting their properties at the same time.

Rental Price Auction

All rental applications will be collected in a user-friendly format with the option to accept or

reject any application with a single click. Rentberry’s auctioning technology (described below)

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ensures transparency and fair competition, and it will also ensure that landlords are able to:

The Rentberry Scoring Methodology

As Rentberry evolves, the platform will allow tenants and landlords to rate each other by

submitting reviews, and will also allow both parties to assess each other by reference to those

reviews and an immutable record of rental activity stored on the blockchain. This information,

coupled with publicly available data (e.g., credit reports, background checks, etc.), will be

analyzed and processed by Rentberry’s proprietary scoring technology. The Rentberry

methodology will be more advanced, decentralized, secure/immutable and intuitive than

vertically-focused solutions that analyze only one aspect of a renter’s history (such as Experian

credit reports in the U.S.). In addition, since the Rentberry scores are part of the tenant and

landlord profiles on the Rentberry platform, they can be used internationally. This will open a

number of new possibilities, including by allowing:

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Landlords, in addition to the actual tenant application data, to use the Rentberry scoring

system to choose the best tenant for the property;

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Members of the Rentberry community to use the Rentberry scoring system to identify

quality tenants they want to back by helping them fund their rental deposits, in return

for certain rewards; and

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Tenants to use the landlord scores in addition to open-house visits to find the

properties with the best landlord.

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Reduce vacancy rates by seamlessly addressing pricing in depressed market

conditions;

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Capitalize on hot markets by extracting the most value from their properties; and

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Select tenants based on data points beyond the amount they are willing to pay.

Rent Collection and Use of BERRY Tokens

All payments on the platform will be executed in BERRY tokens. Landlords will be able to

collect rent in BERRY tokens seamlessly and securely and use it for other services on the

platform, such as to:

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b. Tenants

Focused Property Search

Tenants will be able to display filtered results with a detailed analysis of key information

relating to each listed property. This includes:

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Pay for property promotion and marketing which will feature their properties at the top

of search results and highlight them in a different color on the map of available rentals;

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Use BERRY tokens to help quality tenants by covering a portion of their rental deposits

in exchange for rewards in the form of BERRY tokens;

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Hire third-party service providers, such as house cleaners, handymen, plumbers,

electricians, etc.

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Seamless searches for properties in the desired area using extensive filtering capability

(e.g., size, price, preferred amenities, etc.);

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Online scheduling of open-house visits in order to see the properties and meet the

landlords; and

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An internal and secure communication system that allows potential tenants to contact

landlords without bothering them with phone calls and/or emails.

Transparent Application Process

Rentberry understands that the incumbent rental decision model is binary and unforgiving.

Incomplete or less than desired credit profiles mean having the rental application denied or

putting down a higher rental deposit. That is why Rentberry has developed market leading

application functionalities to benefit tenants. Tenants are able to submit applications online

without bothering landlords and mailing/emailing confidential information (e.g., SSN, passport

numbers, bank account information, etc.). During this process, tenants are able to:

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Analyze demand for the property and relevant information in offers submitted by other

applicants;

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Customize offers in real-time based on demand thus increasing the chances of

securing the property using our proprietary auctioning technology; and

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Negotiate pricing factors (e.g., rent, deposits, lease duration).

As this is a blockchain-based solution, all evidence of formal certification and documentation

required to complete a rental application will be automatically recorded to the distributed

ledger (in a manner compliant with applicable privacy laws, including the European Union’s

GDPR).

Crowdsourced Rental Deposit Coverage

The Rentberry community (tenants, landlords, friends��� family��������) will have�the ability to

utilize their BERRY tokens to cover a portion of rental deposits for selected tenants in

exchange for rewards in the form of BERRY tokens (i.e., an interest rate type return, paid in

BERRY tokens, as a reward for having funded part of the rental deposit). This will allow

otherwise-qualified tenants who might otherwise not be able to afford a rental deposit to rent

an apartment, and by having others contribute to their rental deposit, providing them with

better reputational and financial credibility with potential landlords. This will also give landlords

access to a larger pool of qualified applicants and increase their ability to rent apartments.

Rental Contract Execution

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 crucial time. Execution of the contract

will lead to an automatic settlement (transfer of BERRY tokens) under the terms of the smart

contract, reducing the friction, time and reconciliation issues associated with confirming initial

deposit and rental payments.

Maintenance Requests

Once the property is rented, tenants will be able to conveniently submit maintenance service

requests to the landlords. 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. Tenants who record this activity on the

Rentberry blockchain platform will have proof that they reported issues in a timely manner,

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thereby reducing the potential for liability for additional damage that they allegedly failed to

report promptly, or not at all.

Security of Tenant Information

All of a tenant’s relevant personal data (e.g., financial, rental history, credit rating, references

and reviews) will be secured immutably on the blockchain. This data will be wholly owned and

controlled by the tenant and only made visible to the landlord when the tenant makes a rental

application using their private key / wallet on their mobile and/or web app.

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3. Key Advantages

3.1 Unique Features

3.1.1 Auctioning Technology

The Rentberry Auctioning Technology is part of what we believe to be the platform’s unique

intellectual property, and we are currently in the process of filing for patent protection.

“Innovative customer offer submission technology will
reshape the rental process.”

Monthly Rent

Asking Price: $2,000
Highest Offer: $2,200

Asking Deposit: $3,000
Highest Offer: $3,000

$2,000

Deposit

$3,000

Match Highest
Beat Highest
Show Details

Medium Demand

6 Applications

Average Credit Score

679

2. Additional Info
3. Screening
1. Your Offer

Next

$3,000
Deposit Offer

$2,200

Applicant With Highest Offer

Rent Offer

780
Credit Score

$6,500
Monthly Salary

Pets

Roommates