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Rate My Lord

Rate My Lord

A rental transparency platform for affordable and sustainable housing choices.

Overview

Rate My Lord is a project aimed at creating an affordable and responsible housing community by allowing renters to rate their landlords and rental conditions. This venture addresses the significant burden of ongoing inflation and rising housing prices on people living in rented properties. It tackles the challenge renters face in understanding property conditions during short visits, which often leads to mismatched expectations and needs. The project also addresses the lack of information on the sustainability of rental properties, including their electricity, heating, and water usage. You can find the full pitchdeck here.

Organization

Create an affordable and responsible housing community by rating your landlord and rent conditions.

Social problem and measurement

The ongoing inflation and increase in housing prices have created a significant burden for people who live in rented property, and it is even more difficult for customers to search and secure housing when their budget is limited. In addition, it is difficult for customers to fully understand and know the property with just a short visit to the property, causing many renters to walk and sign into properties that do not fit their needs and expectations. In addition, renters are often unaware of the sustainability of the rental property, including how the house’s electricity, heating, and water.

Business overview and market opportunity

The housing and rental matching service is a growing and underserved market that has a potential to grow in the short term. According to our preliminary survey of our cohort, a significant number of students experienced difficulty searching and securing an affordable rental property before the start of the school year. Most of the students have also experienced some sort of scam or fake listings in the process, and there was no platform or reliable sources that provide such information. Therefore, our team believes that college students searching for housing would be a potential niche market to start.

  • Total Available Market (TAM):
    • $172.4 Billion USD in the United States in 2021
  • Serviceable Available Market (SAM)
    • $31.83 Billion USD Projected in 2023 in the state of California.
  • Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM):
    • $36 Million USD, based on the student size of UC Berkeley in the total population of California.

Possible ways of monetization

  • Sell Ads
  • Subscription
  • Rent platform-owned houses
  • Paid official review to be verified (Twitter verification account)
  • Paid to add details from the lord side
  • Consulting services

Market Competition

Open Igloo

  • Pros
    1. Good looking UI design
    2. Mature rating system
    3. Rent their own properties
  • Cons
    1. Time consuming subjective questionnaires to rate
    2. It’s not considering social impact factors
    3. Bad name

Airbnb

  • Pros
    1. Abundant houses
    2. Abundant users and reviews
  • Cons
    1. Airbnb is for short-term vacation rentals.
    2. It only has rates for living experience not for sustainability

Scaling and Expansion

Our initial focus will be on catering to the demand of students and faculty in universities, who often need to relocate frequently. To achieve this, we plan to follow a scaling path that involves starting at Berkeley Campus, expanding to other UC Campuses, then onto University Campuses, and eventually the general market. In the future, we plan to expand into the real estate market by offering our own accommodations for rent, which will provide greater flexibility and convenience to our target audience. However, we recognize the importance of careful planning and evaluation of the market, location, and costs to ensure the success of this venture.

Business Model

The business model for this organization could be based on advertising revenue or a subscription-based service for landlords who want to improve their ratings and access additional resources. The organization could also potentially partner with local governments or community organizations to provide additional resources and support for renters.

Privacy concerns: Renters’ personal information, such as their names and addresses needs to be protected. Defamation: Landlords could potentially bring claims for defamation if they feel that negative ratings or reviews are untrue or unfair. Data protection: The platform would need to comply with applicable data protection laws, including laws related to the collection, storage, and processing of personal data. Liability: The platform could potentially be held liable for any harm caused by inaccurate or misleading ratings or reviews.

How the venture will be different

Our platform/venture will combine a georeferenced search engine for housing properties with a ranking/rating system that enables residents to review and rate different consumers parameters all at one platform. This platform will allow:

  • Rating sustainability practices (waste management, energy efficiency, local community involvement, transportation accessibility)
  • Promotes environmentally-friendly accommodation choices (low carbon emission, water conservation, construction materials)
  • Raise the overall housing conditions in the market (age of the house, quality of neighborhoods, conditions of facilities, true living experience, lord responsibility)
  • Promote affordable housing, improve social equality, and reduce economic inequality.