Dwellsy
A Functional Marketplace on Multiple Levels
By Carole VanSickle Ellis
Renting has been difficult in the 2020s, and that goes for all parties involved.
While residents tend to make the headlines most frequently due to housing shortages and skyrocketing rent rates, landlords and institutional property owners have struggled as well with the emergence of astounding levels of fraudulent rental-related activity, confusing pandemic-related regulations, and rising demand for bigger, remote-work-friendly single family rental (SFR) properties.
At the same time, “traditional” methods of connecting potential residents and property owners have become more treacherous, with online platforms like Craigslist and even Zillow falling prey to bad actors who use publicly available information to create fake listings, misdirect security deposits and rent payments, and sometimes “squat” in properties for months while the owners struggle with the legalities of evicting someone who was never a tenant in the first place.
Fortunately for all parties, in 2019, Dwellsy co-founders Jonas and Rosalind Bordo debuted their game-changing “rental search experience” platform that is, the company states, “a new paradigm of genuine empathy for renter experience.” This empathy combined with a practical approach to the entire rental process is helping to fill what Jonas Bordo calls a “gap in the market” that was putting both residents and landlords at ongoing risk.
“When we first started thinking about Dwellsy, it was because we realized that there was a real need to solve the problem that there really was no functional marketplace for renters,” Bordo explained. “Craigslist had been an amazing tool, but by the end of 2018, the majority of listings contained some element of fraud.” That is not just Bordo slamming the competition; just last year the FBI released a public statement warning that real estate fraud had risen 64% year-over-year and citing Craigslist by name.
“There was a huge need for a new marketplace and, at the same time, there was a huge need for high quality rent data throughout the industry.”
Prior to founding Dwellsy, Bordo had spent more than a decade working in the real estate industry at large real estate investment firms and handling operational services for a publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) with ownership interest in tens of thousands of residential units primarily on the west coast. In this position, Bordo often found he needed timely, accurate, high-quality data about rental trends in different markets around the country but, despite the vast resources at his fingertips, was unable to find it.
“It just was not available,” he recalled. “I would talk to every vendor I could find in the [data space], and even when you could get access, it was often aggregated in ways that made the information challenging to use or the timeliness was lacking.”
In 2018, Bordo and his co-founder realized that meeting the need for a new way to for landlords and tenants to connect would also enable them to create a veritable fount of real-time real estate and rental data. Shortly thereafter, they founded Dwellsy and took the platform live.
“I saw that if we could create a marketplace where we could, first and foremost, do a great job of serving renters and landlords, helping renters find their next home and helping landlords get their places rented, we would be providing a truly valuable and in-demand service,” Bordo said. He continued, “In the process of creating that platform, we would gain access to marketing feeds, data streams, and, if we were successful in our primary goal, large volumes of relevant and timely information about the market that we could provide to landlords and others who needed that information to run their businesses more effectively.”
The co-founders agreed there was no need to ever place a “toll” on tenants or property owners using the platform to find a home or fill a vacancy because the value of the data pool would far outweigh any listing fees they could possibly charge.
“That was the opportunity, and it really took off quickly,” Bordo said. In fact, in just under four years, the company has expanded to offer listing access anywhere in the United States and offers data coverage for about 800 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) nationwide. They only claim data coverage for areas with substantial enough listing populations that true trend identification and analysis may be performed; if the data volume is too small and “choppy” to draw statistically valid conclusions then Dwellsy does not claim that market as covered.
“We do not create data or do aggregation to create numbers or statistics where otherwise that information would not exist,” Bordo said proudly. “Our analysis is straightforward and transparent with our primary focus on getting the data points to meet our clients’ needs.”
How & Why Dwellsy Works
As any analyst will tell you, often the most groundbreaking insights come from the most straightforward of data sets. Similarly, any landlord will tell you that the best policy for rentals is to keep things simple (and easy) for residents. With that in mind, Dwellsy accomplishes one simple thing: making it easier for renters to find “hard-to-find” rentals. As the company’s website observes, “Right now, all rentals are ‘hard-to-find’ because properties exist across disparate inventories…paid placement interferes with organic search results… [and] amenity tagging and searching is limited.”
Furthermore, the entire process has been clouded by fraud and is plagued by mistrust and uncertainty for all parties. Dwellsy tackles these issues with a direct, take-no-prisoners strategy that includes eliminating “pay-to-play” listings, offering early access contact services that alert would-be renters when a property that meets their predetermined parameters becomes available, and providing a fraud-detection framework under their Dwellsy Edge program that uses artificial intelligence and proprietary algorithms to identify fraudulent listings before they ever go live.
“One of the biggest challenges in this business is the level of fraud,” Bordo said. “We apply a variety of algorithms to every incoming listing to keep things as safe as they can possibly be, and we offer a $2,000 warranty to renters as part of our promise that they will not be defrauded.”
Using the Dwellsy SafeSearch system, the company categorizes each listing as either verified, at which point it receives a “badge” indicating this status, or unverified, which means it does not receive a badge. If a listing appears to be fraudulent, it will not appear at all.
“Fraud is a real pain point for today’s renters,” said Bordo, noting that in a recent survey of Dwellsy renters, one in five reported having experienced rental fraud in the past with an average loss around $3,000.
“This just made us more determined to be the company that gets fraud out of the system,” Bordo continued. “With verified listings, we are close to 100% sure that those are legitimate listings; with the unverified ones, we are still more than 99% sure, and the other ones will never be seen.”
Bordo explained that many of the danger signals in fraudulent listings are obvious to an objective observer. However, residents seeking housing that is attractive and affordable are anything but objective.
“If the price is too good to be true, it probably is,” Bordo said. He continued, “There are no beachfront apartments in Malibu for $700 a month, for example. It is just not possible.”
He noted there are many other more subtle signs that indicate potential fraud but declined to describe the “secret sauce” in the Dwellsy algorithm because publicizing such information could compromise the company’s ability to spot those signs.
“We look at every feature, every property manager, every property that comes to us,” Bordo said. “This needs to be a safe industry, and renters need to trust that they are not going to be defrauded.”
On the other side of the equation, Dwellsy helps would-be landlords avoid fraud red flags by providing data about their rental markets to help them price their properties competitively.
“DwellsyIQ is a simple tool we designed to help property owners benchmark their properties,” Bordo explained. “You can put in the address of your rental property and immediately see what your peer set looks like, what other people are charging locally for similar places, and a lot of other information to help you figure out what to charge in your specific context.”
Driven By Data
At its heart, Dwellsy is a data-driven organization, and it exists not just to serve landlords and tenants, but to serve the needs of the entire rental space.
“We have an education mission not just for renters, but also for real estate investors,” Bordo said, noting Dwellsy offers a vast array of data sets investors can use in their own data products or to make decisions about pricing and acquisition models. The company also offers comparables reports, which Bordo noted are “very low-cost products” intended to help investors make decisions about how to list their own properties to best effect.
“For the first time, we are making good quality rent data available to the people who need it most,” Bordo said proudly. “Rent data of this quality and depth has never been available before and we are part of making this type of information widely available for the first time. Thanks to this data, Dwellsy will always be a free listing platform serving landlords all across country, and we are excited to continue building our rental listing inventory.”
SIDEBAR 1
The Dwellsy Edge
Dwellsy Edge is a benefits package designed to help residents optimize their renting experience from the first listings search to that first stroll around the block in the new neighborhood.
Dwellsy Edge includes:
Early Access Notifications
Renters receive real-time text alerts as soon as a new listing that meets their criteria appears on the website.
SafeSearch
Dwellsy’s fraud protection not only filters out fraudulent listings so they never appear in public in the first place; it also comes with $2,000 in protection if a renter experiences fraud on a listing found through Dwellsy.
Moving Assistant
Dwellsy partners with Updater to provide Edge users with an integrated platform to help track every element of the move, including transferring utilities, securing insurance, and forwarding mail.
Ad Removal
If ads are too distracting, Dwellsy Edge removes them for a smoother search.
Dog Walk on Dwellsy
As Bordo puts it, “Moving is stressful, even for dogs. We provide every Dwellsy Edge user with a free dog walk from Rover to help keep the pet-stress levels down and make the whole process easier.”
SIDEBAR 2
Dwellsy IQ: Data-Backed Real Estate Intelligence by the Numbers
Because Dwellsy is the largest listing provider in the United States, the company leverages its database to provide comprehensive residential rental property information. The data is deduplicated, normalized, and enriched before entering the Dwellsy IQ platform. Dwellsy provides data and insights on:
» The national rental housing footprint
» Single-family rental (SFR) housing
» Multifamily housing
» Regional and local MSAs SFR/MFR
“All of our data is straight from the source,” Bordo said. “We never scrape; this data does not include surveys, and it is meticulously curated. Furthermore, we are really proud to say it is always fresh.”
14 Million // Dwellsy IQ data is sourced from more than 14 million listings
250 // number of attributes in Dwellsy data; this includes information gleaned from photos included in the listings to optimize decision-making
16,000 // Dwellsy data is sourced from more than 16,000 ZIP codes
800 // Dwellsy covers more than 800 MSAs
20,000 // Dwellsy boasts more than 20,000 verified listing providers
SIDEBAR 3
Encouraging Students & Educating Future Investors
In 2022, Dwellsy co-founders Jonas and Rosalind Bordo created an annual collegiate scholarship designed to encourage students to learn a little bit more about the rental process and renters’ rights while also helping them cover housing expenses “so they can focus on their education,” Bordo explained. He continued, “We have a lot of folks on our team who are renters themselves and feel very strongly about the importance of access to housing, so we thought this would be a good way to educate young adults and also help people.” All applicants for the scholarship are provided with an excerpt from Bordo’s book, Everything You Need to Know About Renting But Didn’t Know to Ask, and write an essay related to that excerpt. This year, the essay topic is, “What is one thing you think all renters should know?” Last year, the company awarded two scholarships, and this year, it will award five.
Learn more about the Dwellsy annual collegiate scholarship at Dwellsy.com/blog/scholarship.
