Benzinga | Oct 5, 2021 09:03AM EDT

Rentberry Offers Digital Platform to Connect Landlords and Tenants; Upping Investment

Photo by Tierra Mallorca on Unsplash

Rentberry is a San Francisco-based company attempting to capitalize on the increasing number of people looking to rent property in the U.S. and internationally.

It aims to put tenants and landlords together on a purely digital basis, allowing both parties to negotiate rental amounts and ease the normal burdens of securing agreements among various parties -- even eliminating the need for security deposits.

The company of 30 employees, co-founded by Oleksiy Lubinsky, is now raising money through a Reg A+ scheme to help fuel its growth, initially targeting $12.4 million but aiming to triple that amount eventually. A Reg A+ investment project is an example of equity crowdfunding that can bypass certain registration details with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Macro Trends Further Driving Business Model

A combination of the move toward increasing amounts of non-office-based work and the need for digital solutions in the rental space is fueling the company's growth plans, which include specifically targeting people who want to rent for periods of 3 months to 1 year only.

The so-called Flexible Living project "was inspired by the shift to remote work and the ability to live and work from anywhere in the world," the company says. Part of Rentberry's next move in assisting this project is an attempt to acquire fully furnished properties available for such mid-term lengths of time.

"Our goal is to bring one gold standard to the home rental industry that, no matter where you travel, you get the same quality home and the same level of service," says Lubinsky.Investors Attracted

More generally, investors are attracted to the combination of the increasing trend toward rentals versus ownership and younger professionals wanting an easier digital process to secure their rental property.

"As more and more people lean toward rent, it makes sense that you need a better engine for managing that," said Steve Burton, a partner in investment group Beechwood Ventures. "A lot of the people we find in the urban areas that are becoming renters are the age and lifestyle and background such that they prefer web-related apps."

Other investors are also signing up to put a stake into Rentberry, attracted by the disruptive nature of the company, among other things. Large related companies like Airbnb Inc (NASDAQ:ABNB) and Booking Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:BKNG) have also caught onto the trend but are struggling to catch up to the innovation and demand in the market -- partly due to not being purpose-built for longer-term renting.

"We look for scalable, innovative, and ideally disruptive solutions with a global market potential," said Gary Macbeth, a partner at Perth, Australia-based 808 Ventures. "We look for a leadership team who are smart, driven and open-minded individuals with a good sense of humor and, ideally, we like to find companies who are on the cusp of monetization. So, Rentberry checked all those boxes and more for us."

Rentberry operates currently in over 50 countries with a portfolio of over 3 million properties and serves about a million people monthly.