Digital Rental Platform Development for South Africa
In the era of giant real estate services like Zillow and Trulia, it’s hard to imagine a situation where landlords don’t have a proper, reliable platform to look for long-term tenants. However, there was a white space for a website like this in South Africa back in 2016. And that’s how we got to work on Rentorr, an all in one real estate platform for the local market.
Jacob Oresanya
Client
In 2016, Jacob Oresanya came to us with an idea for a listing service featuring property for long-term rent for the South African market. The project was quite promising: at the time, there was no big competitive local service like that, so it was only logical to take a chance and fill the niche.
Since Jacob was a local, he became our guide to the regional market, sharing all the tips, tricks, and insights that helped us come up with the perfect tech solutions.
According to Jacob’s vision, the key functionality of his all-in-one real estate software platform revolved around matching the landlords with suitable, trustworthy tenants who were willing to rent long-term. However, there was another user persona he wanted to involve in the process: the contractor.
The idea was to quickly connect the tenants with electricians, plumbers, and other workers able to handle property maintenance jobs.
This way, if the residents had a leaking sink, a broken washing machine, or any other issue — they would be able to fix it in a matter of a few clicks.
As a result, all operations connected to leasing, renting, and maintaining real estate properties would happen in one place.
Our solution
After conducting tons of research, together with the client, we were able to shape the final concept for the product.
That’s how we developed Rentorr, a real estate management and maintenance platform created to connect landlords, tenants, and contractors, and facilitate seamless collaboration between them, all within one service.
Rentorr discovery
When it comes to software development, the only way to make a thriving product is to collect and process as much data as possible. So, that’s exactly what we did.
After conducting numerous interviews, surveys, and brainstorming sessions, as well as exploring the target audiences and their pain points, we were able to define the user personas and create detailed portraits of them.
What is more, our client needed some extra help with business plan development, so we conducted an in-depth analysis of the local real estate market size and its specifics. Calculating the total available market (TAM), serviceable available market (SAM), and serviceable obtainable market (SOM) allowed us to estimate how profitable the idea actually was.
When working on the discovery stage, we defined the portraits of the platform’s prospective users. Such an approach is crucial if you want to build a winning business and marketing strategy. As a result, Rentorr was developed with three key user personas in mind, each having specific needs and expectations we aspired to meet.
Landlords
wanted to:
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quickly rent out an apartment to reliable and solvent tenants
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easily manage maintenance requests
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eliminate the hustle and bustle of letting property
Tenants
wanted to:
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quickly and seamlessly find long-term rental properties
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conduct secure online payments
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easily get access to maintenance services
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have a convenient platform for communication with landlords
Contractors
wanted to:
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have a platform to advertise their services and easily apply for contracting jobs
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receive compensation through secure online payments
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establish a stable income by using one single platform
Rentorr UI/UX
Human’s need to find a safe harbor remains timeless. However, the tools for finding a perfect home evolve constantly, making the search a simpler task than ever before. That’s exactly what we set out to convey in Rentorr’s design.
When developing a logo for Rentorr, our team incorporated a few hidden meanings into it.
The combination of R and a house icon connects the idea of finding a home with the brand name. As a result, while the house remains recognizable, it looks modern and technological, representing the future of real estate, which is what Rentorr is all about.
Color palette
A true home is a place associated with a sense of balance, stability, and ease. It’s somewhere you can plant your roots and feel at peace. That’s why we went for different shades of green as the leading color of the platform.
The icons
Since Rentorr was focused on enabling quick and easy home search, our designers paid extra attention to the icons. Making them as realistic, accurate, and easy to perceive as possible, we strived to speed up the process of reviewing listings and get the tenants one step closer to finding their ideal home.
Rentorr development
Our aspiration when building the all-in-one real estate platform was to make it equally helpful to all three categories of target users. As a result, each of them got the solutions perfectly tailored to their needs and expectations.
Rentorr for landlords
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Property management functionality with an easy-to-use dashboard to advertise, lease and manage apartments and houses
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Fraud check that involves bank verification of prospective tenants to make sure they will be able to pay rent consistently
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Financial operations management functionality that allows landlords to receive payments from the tenants and keep track of transactions history
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Communication with the tenants through a messenger and monitoring maintenance jobs involving contractors
Rentorr for tenants
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Advanced search with multiple filters to help tenants choose a home that corresponds with their requirements
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Financial operations management functionality that allows tenants to conduct payments through the platform and get access to their personal financial history
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Communication with landlords and contractors who apply for maintenance jobs
Rentorr for contractors
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Job search functionality that allows contractors to advertise their services, look for maintenance jobs and apply for them
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Financial operations management functionality to receive payments from tenants through the platform
Rentorr development
Polished, smooth, fast, and bug-free. Here are the technologies our development team used to achieve these characteristics.
Front-end
Backend
One of the biggest pain points for the landlords was that they often had to deal with tenants who turned out to be unreliable and unable to pay rent consistently. The fraud check feature was our solution to their problem, even though its implementation hasn’t been easy.
Collaboration with the bank
To integrate tenant verification functionality, our team partnered with a South African bank. How exactly did it work? The tenant would upload their personal details, and the bank would verify their solvency by analyzing income statements, credit history, and other data. In the end, the applicant was given a credibility score.
When looking for a suitable bank, our search was significantly narrowed down since not a lot of banks provided an API necessary for the fraud check feature. And even though we found one, the solution still was far from perfect, so we had to constantly keep in touch with the bank representatives to make various adjustments. This was a tiresome process but in the end, the results were impeccable.
The Mind Studios team worked on Rentorr way back in 2016-2017, and naturally, a lot has changed in the real estate market since then.
However, this project is still of great value to us since it was our first big-scale all-in-one real estate services and technology platform for the real estate industry — and it laid the foundation for numerous other projects in the future. That is why, to us, the Rentorr case is a story about the first yet solid brick in our real estate development expertise.
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