Two Victoria locals have been spending their time developing a new online platform to easily connect renters and landlords who make a good match.
This website, RentSimple, began as a product of desperation for Co-founders Jack Campbell and Ben Guarasci, as when they were still attending UVic, they struggled with finding suitable, affordable places to live while navigating online scammers claiming to be landlords.
“[In 2021] there was definitely an intense rental shortage and it’s still really bad, but at that time it felt particularly bad,” Campbell told Victoria Buzz.
The house the two co-founders were living in was slated to be torn down, so Campbell said any chance they got, they would check any viable rental platform to see if anything new had come up.
“We found that it was consuming all our time—when we weren’t at school or working we were on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, Used Victoria, constantly refreshing all these pages,” Campbell explained.
“We found it really time consuming and also, we did about 100 applications or inquiries and only heard back from two that were both trying to get us to pre-send the damage deposit, like a scam.”
Because of their tough time online, Guarasci used the skills he gained at UVic in his Computer Software Engineering degree to build a website that consolidated all the rental platforms’ postings and provided them an email notification when a two-bedroom close to downtown came up.
They found success with the program they had made and decided to allow some of their fellow students in the same boat to have the same opportunity so they posted about it online.
“We thought that maybe 100 people would maybe use it, but within 24 hours there was over 1,000 students using it and we didn’t even have a domain,” Campbell said.
At a certain point they put the website on the shelf for a few years before this year, when they decided to take a new approach with it.
RentSimple’s evolution
“We started talking to landlords and started realizing there are certain hoops you kind of have to jump through in order to make yourself stand out or how to market yourself [as a renter],” Campbell continued.
The new version of RentSimple has would-be tenants fill out a profile to answer questions that any landlord would want to know, and from there the platform will connect the parties who have what the other wants.
When it comes to the landlords who are able to use the platform and access information about those seeking a home, Campbell and Guarasci personally meet and vet any and all property managers and landlords connected to RentSimple.
“When a renter makes their profile, as soon as their profile is complete, they’ll get a pop-up with a few different options for them and they can either click interested or not interested—if they click interested, it’ll notify the property manager,” said Campbell.
“So it sort of works like a dating app in that sense.”
He added that what they have found is that property managers would rather access their database than have to sift through hundreds of applications when something becomes available.
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Currently, they have around 250 users on the platform and they want to get those numbers higher.
They say the 15 property managers they work with manage a cumulative 45,000 units in Greater Victoria.
Campbell says he anticipates around 4,500 of those units becoming available throughout the year.
Campbell says that right now they are dealing mostly with landlords who manage several properties, 90% of which are condos. He added that it is easiest for those landlords to access RentSimple without concerns over privacy issues.
For this reason they make sure to vet any landlord users personally.
Another thing they are working on presently is how to mitigate any potential racism or discrimination towards new immigrants.
“There’s no question that you don’t want any sort of discrimination,” stated Campbell.
“What we’ve done to combat that is property managers that use the platform obviously can’t see photos. If someone is trying to find a rental through Facebook, they can see all your photos and stuff like that.”
He added that all details that might lead to discrimination, they plan on blurring to potential landlords.
RentSimple also has a plan to help those who are new to Canada and might have barriers in terms of acquiring past rental histories, credit scores and other information landlords may request.
“We are actually meeting with some international non-profits to build a specific channel to make the hoops new Canadians have to jump through a lot more straightforward and transparent,” Campbell explained.
As of this publication, RentSimple is live, free and able to help all Victorians looking for a rental.
The co-founders told Victoria Buzz that currently they are hoping to build and grow the business and to do that they welcome any and all feedback users may have.
