For Fit to Rent CEO Sean Healy it was the moment a prospective landlord requested blood samples of his children that pushed him over the edge.
Months of sifting through property listings… no cats for that one, no dogs for another; an abundance of rude brokers and property managers content to accumulate application fees with no actual urgency to rent the property.
“Here we were, my young, albeit large, family — three boys, three dogs, one cat — in the midst of transitioning out of the military and needing to relocate to Cambridge,” Healy said. “I thought I finally caught a break with a great multi-family unit until the landlord delivered the small catch: ‘I need blood samples of your boys so you can’t sue me if they get lead poisoning.’”
Healy shook his head at the memory, “The worst part… I actually thought about it.”
While the story eventually ended with the Healy family happily settled in a cozy home leased by wonderful landlords, the many challenges Sean experienced as both a renter and a landlord remained top of mind.
“With every move my family and I made during my time as active duty military, we were asked to share extremely personal information with strangers — social security numbers, tax returns, and driver’s license numbers,” said Healy. “Yet each time, the landlord I was leaving was begging me to stay. I wondered why there wasn’t a better way for me to show off my merits as a renter.”
The concept for Fit to Rent began to bubble.
When Healy relocated to Charlotte in 2014, he connected with fellow West Point graduate Jordan Garrett who shared his entrepreneurial spirit and had experienced his own pains in the rental world. As plans for a matchmaking software connecting tenants and landlords began to take shape, Healy and Garrett teamed with third co-founder and technical genius, Lee Wouters, to launch Fit to Rent.
“90% of tenants are quality, responsible renters,” Healy said. “We wanted to make it easy for those folks to showcase their reputability while also protecting their personal information. For landlords, we wanted to create an opportunity to shop for great tenants and put an end to the ‘list, wait, hope’ standard that currently exists.”
A pre-qualification service for tenants launched late last fall, and Fit to Rent has now unveiled its Landlord Software Suite for beta users. In addition to finding top-tier tenants, landlords can feel burdened by the administrative tasks required to provide a home people desire.
“Too many landlords, myself included, have watched valuable rental income evaporate because of a wide array of property management fees,” said Healy. “We are giving landlords the ability to self-manage their properties and gain the best return on their investments.”
Member landlords can track lease and tenant details, collect rent payments and deposits, manage renewals to decrease vacancy rates, and analyze the financials of their investment all in one place.
As the user base continues to grow, the Fit to Rent team is hard at work developing the inverted search functionality that will enable landlords to not only access demand for their property, but also locate high-quality tenants interested in their home.
“We are excited about the feedback we are already receiving from many local landlords utilizing the service,” noted Healy. “Charlotte is ripe with real estate investors who want to cater to a growing market of renters. We want to be Match.com for the city’s best renters and landlords!”
If you are interested in gaining free access to the Fit to Rent landlord software, contact CMO, Erica Madden (Erica@fittorent.com), to become one of a select group of beta users.
