Almost everyone in Boston, at some time or another, has probably had a renting experience from hell. Some people may have chosen an apartment with questionable structural integrity, while others could have forked over so much money to a realtor just to save their sanity. And in some cases, they’ve done both.
But Wizio, a new online apartment marketplace coming out of Northeastern, is about to make rental nightmares a distant memory. The startup - which is crowdsourcing information about apartments throughout the city, as well as streamlining the rental search, application and leasing process - just launched its beta site this weekend as its first step revolutionizing the system.
Yes, there are other websites in existence that aid in the rental process. However, Wizio is looking to be the first one that acts in the best interest of tenants - not landlords and real estate agents.
“There’s nowhere for tenants to talk about the truth, which is why we started doing what we’re doing.”
While speaking with the startup’s founders Chris Canal and Devon Grodkiewicz, they explained how the site is going to give power back to renters.
It’s pretty simple: Wizio consists of tenant-made videos, which are taken of apartments, used to share the true living experience at a given place and uploaded onto the site. Tenants are encouraged to divulge any dirty secrets - like leaky roofs or scummy landlords - so that people looking for apartments know what they’re really getting into.
This data is gold to other people looking for apartments. To make sure the site proves to be a wealth of information, Wizio is committed to building it up quickly. So everyone who uploads a tell-all tour of their apartment will later be able to use Wizio to find and lease a place - free of charge. That means no signing fee, which is normally a full month’s rent, all for taking 10 minutes to share.
Why waive fees for information?
It almost seems to good to be true. But it is true: Wizio is on a mission to shift the Boston real estate market back to being tenant-centric.
“We’re addressing a common problem in Boston,” Canal started. “50 percent of people here say they’ve had a negative renting experience.”
“The information on Craigslist ends up becoming a nightmare and working with a realtor is so expensive,” he continued. “Paying all of the realtor fees can be an average of $2,400 - about 8 percent of someone’s annual living expenses.”
In many cases, renters are shelling out huge portions of money to live in places that aren’t as desirable as presented by the people trying to rent them. Both Canal and Grodkiewicz explained that the problem with the current system is that renters have no choice but to rely on information given from real estate agents or landlords - individuals who have a financial stake in the situation.
“Landlords and realtors are trying to make money,” Canal explained. “There is no financial benefit for them to tell you how the roof might leak, or how the heat might not work in the winter. And there are usually no repercussions. The past tenants move out, and there are so many people looking for places to live that apartments are filled without question.”
Wizio is stepping up to support renters. With their platform, they’re hoping to take people with a conflict of interest out of the equation and give tenants the chance to talk.
“There’s nowhere for tenants to talk about the truth, which is why we started doing what we’re doing,” Canal told me. “Realtors and landlords can’t upload anything to our site. Only tenants - who have no financial incentive or interest, no reason to lie - are allowed to share information here.”
Knowledge is power for renters
By bringing renters together on the Wizio platform, the founders aim to create a new breed of informed consumerism. More and more, people are giving much thought to what they’re spending their money on - and apartments should be no different.
“Millennials are renting more and more,” Canal pointed out. “They’re choosing not to buy, so renting has become the biggest financial commitment that we make. But there’s less data out there helping us choose a good place to live than if we were buying something as small as a spoon on Amazon - which has so many reviews for us to make an informed investment. The logic inverse, and we need to change that.”
Wizio’s strong tenant-sharing platform will hopefully prevent us from falling into unfortunate living circumstances. But in general, renters need to take their newfound power and stop letting themselves be duped - not only for themselves, but for the tenant community as a whole.
“Realtors bring you to crappy listings, saying you have to act now and sign today, or else the apartment will be gone,” Canal said.
“They’re creating false demand, which may not seem like a big deal on an individual basis, but on a macro scale, it’s driving up prices and putting us in places we don’t want to be in,” he said.
Image via Devon Grodkiewicz.
