RentBetter, a self-service property management platform, announced raising a $1.9 million to help private landlords manage their properties better, according to Smart Company.
The company plans to use the funding to build out its team and increase investment in product development. It also says it will fuel a marketing campaign to boost the startup’s exposure.
“We want to use this funding to get in front of those people,” RentBetter Chief Executive and founder Jeremy Goldschmidt told Smart Company.
Founded in 2018, RentBetter provides a list of services to these small landlords, including ads, inquiries, lease agreements, condition reports, payments and receipts within a single platform, removing the need to spend money on a separate property manager.
There seems to be demand as well, with the startup claiming its subscriber base has increased by about 250% year-over-year. A recent study by the Pew Research Center found that there at 14.1 million individual property investors in the US, with mom-and-pop landlords making up the majority of the market.
Despite RentBetter being located in Australia, the study underlines the importance of servicing these individuals, who need ways to reduce operating expenses and decrease administrative burden.
The company says that 20% of the adult Australian population participates in the property market in one way or another.
Goldschmidt also says that despite Australia’s leasing and management market being worth an estimated $6 billion, there are no significant tech platforms overing self-management services within the sector.
“There’s just a very large amount of things that they need to cover every day. And when you look at it, nobody cares about your asset or your investment more than you — the investor or the landlord,” he said.
In other recent proptech news, Luke is using AI-backed chatbots to make first-time home buying simple. Propy is also bringing its real estate-backed NFTs to the US.