RentJolt enters live beta
The New York City real estate scene is far different than many other markets in America, with renting being the common option and renters paying brokers out of pocket for services – it’s the wild west of real estate that operates on different rules, although all licensees that carry the Realtor brand are bound by the National Association of Realtors’ Code of Ethics.
Because the city operates very differently, there is a lot of room for innovation, especially surrounding ways to save money. Enter RentJolt, an “apartment futures marketplace” that has just gone into live beta for all NYC dwellers to use.
RentJolt co-founder, Samuel Sheinin says the concept is to incentivize “current tenants to post information about their apartments months in advance of moving, and allows prospective tenants to browse listings up to eight months in advance, easing the pressure of last-minute scrambles.”
Sheinin tells AGBeat that “Current tenants can earn between $500-$1000 if their apartment rents through our site, and the fee for incoming tenants is 5.75%, considerably lower than the 12% average.”
Once an application on a listed unit is submitted, RentJolt’s “local partners will take it from there.” The local partners will pre-qualify the tenant, collect the current resident’s signed surrender form and take the package to the landlord and oversee the process through the lease execution and payment, claiming that as soon as two weeks later the resident who listed the unit gets paid.
The company is self funded and appears to be a small team, but their concept to save New Yorkers money will likely perform well.
