Rently
Leading the Way in Self-Guided Touring
by Carole VanSickle Ellis
It’s a tough world out there for rental owners and residents, and at no point is it tougher than when the two parties are seeking each other but have not yet met. The peril does not so much lie in the difficulty in finding affordable housing or locating a unit that meets a household’s needs (although those activities can be challenging) but, instead, in actually managing to lease a real home or apartment. Thanks to skyrocketing rental fraud that targets asset owners, managers, and residents alike, the rental landscape has become more challenging than ever.
According to the FBI, incidences of single-family rental fraud began rising in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a 27% jump in reported cases between 2021 and 2022, and, in 2024, the FBI Crime Complaint Center (IC3) announced the cumulative reported losses related to real estate fraud had reached a sum in excess of $145 million.
The center noted actual losses were probably much higher since many real estate scams go unreported due to victim embarrassment. The results of this burgeoning, troublesome trend run the gamut from rising rental rates to increased insurance costs and permanent damage to innocent victims and corporate brands that get caught in the crossfire when scammers successfully defraud victims using the landlord’s name or real assets.
Rently, a self-touring smart-home technology company that combines hardware and software solutions to optimize leasing efficiency for landlords, believes its platform represents the best solution to this emerging threat. Company co-founder Clark Li, who currently serves as CTO and works on smart-home and smart-building solutions, said his company, which was created to improve convenience for would-be renters, now holds the cure for the “pain points” both owners and would-be renters experience when it comes to securely accessing units and keeping the entire transaction clear of con artists and fraud.
“Merrick Lackner, our CEO and my co-founder, and I drew from our own difficulties related to housing searches when we started the company in 2011,” Li said. “We wanted to create a system that would immediately answer a potential resident’s two main questions: ‘Is it available?’ and ‘When can I see it?’”
The result of their collaboration would be one of the original self-touring platforms and make Rently what Li describes as “pioneers [and] the undisputed leader in self-guided touring.”
Thanks to the company’s head start in the space, Rently is uniquely equipped to combat the rising spread of issues surrounding security and rental fraud, noted director of business operations Sahil Farooqi. Farooqi joined Rently in 2017, when the company was expanding into smart-home technology designed to protect owners and residents while providing appropriate and convenient access to units when necessary.
“It was so important, especially during the pandemic and continuing today, that good people continue to have the ability to view homes and rent properties,” Farooqi said. “We create systems that enable good actors to access properties while the bad actors are detected early, at the top of the ‘funnel,’ and owners and residents remain secure and protected.”
“A Whole Array of Scams” Threaten Single-Family Real Estate
Although both single-and multifamily real estate are under attack from increasingly sophisticated scammers, the single-family space, in particular, has reeled under an assault of elaborate hoaxes and cons that results in millions of lost revenue, the total annihilation of life savings in some cases, and the destruction of trusted corporate brands.
“There is a whole array of scams in the SFR space,” Farooqi observed. “We see social engineering, wired money, vandalism, trespassing, tactical targeting of vulnerable and gullible potential renters, fake listings, and manipulation.” He explained the biggest weak point for many asset owners lies in the ability of scammers to create relationships with would-be tenants by posing as those owners or representatives of the owners and establishing trust before springing the trap and requesting irreversible, wire-transferred “deposits” or even installing tenants in homes. In the latter case, tenants often believe they are legitimately renting the space only to learn they are squatting illegally and must be evicted. This can lead to intense resentment of the owners and property managers as well as losses in income and monies paid.
Rently, Farooqi said, stops this entire vicious cycle early in its tracks through verification methods that confirm for parties on both sides of the leasing equation that the other party is legitimate.
“We provide property managers with I.D. verification and selfie verification technology,” he explained. These types of real-time verifications prevent the sorts of unauthorized access that can occur with traditional lockboxes, which may be broken and removed or “decoded” for unauthorized entry. Rently recently debuted another security feature that cross references with the Department of Motor Vehicles.
The company prevents scammers from taking advantage of redundancy in tours and visits to break into additional properties by requiring real-time check-ins at each property. A selfie-check, for example, must show the person and the property they are entering and match with the documented appearance of the individual who scheduled the tour. Only then will the system permit entry.
Of course, Farooqi conceded, “fraudsters are always evolving their tactics.” To address this issue, the Rently team developed a machine learning model to evolve right along with the most advanced scams. “Our security team manages this risk-scoring model and conducts a review on a daily basis to enhance the model,” he said. “It takes into consideration changing tactics of scammers and guides us toward places they might try to enter the platform. We detect the attempt proactively and stop them from entering the property.”
Revisiting the Multifamily Angle
As Rently’s prowess at preventing SFR fraud continued to strengthen and grow, more multifamily operators expressed interest in developing their own custom systems that would operate on the same principles. To assist in this, Jared East, Rently’s vice president of product & software, and his team began working on options that would meet large operators’ needs.
“There are a lot of multifamily operators beginning to manage their properties offsite, and they need centralized offices with the ability to facilitate tours without having an actual human being onsite for those tours,” East explained. As more potential clients began requesting a platform to assist with this goal, East’s team got to work. The timing could not have been more fortuitous for all involved.
“When COVID happened, people were taken away from their properties and they had no choice but to facilitate self-guided tours,” East said. “We built the product to client specifications, and demand began rolling in.”
The team ultimately focused on the platform’s ability to assist human operators rather than replace them, a key component that enabled the team to create what East described as “a seamless navigation experience.” This element was unique to multifamily properties because a potential resident often wishes to tour more than one unit and may need assistance not only accessing a unit, but also reaching it.
“They not only need the correct access tools; they also need help routing from one location to another, and the property manager or owner needs to know where they are going and have confidence that they are only accessing the predetermined locations,” East said.
Emphasizing the Element of Customization
One thing that makes Rently stand out in the self-guided touring and smart-home industry is its dedication to serving the unique needs of each of its clients, East said. “We are determined to satisfy the needs of individual property managers, not just an avatar of a client,” he explained. “This enables clients to establish branding and consistency within their user experience while leveraging the security and elevated protection Rently products bring.”
Li noted that as more operators in the SFR and multifamily spaces lean into branding as a way to distinguish their properties from others run by competitors, many are inclined to “decentralize” their security from other operating systems. This, he warns, is a mistake.
“If you build your systems like a puzzle and take one piece from one provider and one piece from another, you tend to degrade your overall system and hurt your user experience,” Li explained. To combat this issue, Rently focuses on integrating the user experience from beginning to end, he said, “specializing in in-house manufacture of hardware and integrating that with our software solutions. This keeps the user experience smooth and enables our clients to better control the user experience.”
“We have invested so much time, money, and energy into understanding who an individual is and how that compares to who they say they are,” East explained. “Rently functions partially as a centralized way to handle this process.” East said without some degree of centralization, security systems and anti-fraud protocols are particularly risky because the different pieces do not necessarily communicate clearly from a decentralized operation.
“If one entity does I.D. verification, one provides facial recognition, and another handles location confirmation, they do not necessarily have the wherewithal to pull it all together and apply, for example, machine-learning algorithms and human verification that all these pieces are fitting together and confirming the same individual,” he explained. “Rently’s ability to centralize these components and others is key to achieving that.”
Living & Breathing on the Cutting Edge
Ultimately, advances in one space often supplement and support advances in another. As SFR properties began experiencing more attacks from new angles other than “simple” listing fraud, many of the developments that began on the multifamily side could be applied to single-family properties, and vice versa. All of these elements combine with the smart-home side of the equation to create a premier access experience for potential residents while protecting the asset’s owners from losses associated with rental scams and fraud.
“We have been working on [hardware and software] combinations for years, and we have perfected the tools needed for people to securely access a place,” Li said proudly. “The system of people who need access at different times to different assets or units is complicated, and we spend a lot of time thinking about the intricate relationship between various parties while building and maintaining security.”
Farooqi added, “These solutions are cutting-edge, and anything that is cutting-edge always needs to be evolving, living, and breathing. Rently continues to evolve and provide solutions that our clients and their clients need in today’s industry.”
SIDEBAR 1
Rental Scams by the Numbers
The fraud “marketplace” is rife with malicious creativity, and the best defense possible is a good offense. The first step to going on the offensive is “knowing your enemy,” so here is a short overview of rental scams “by the numbers.”
A$8.5 million — mount of money lost by investors and short-term renters in a nationwide Airbnb/VRBO scam in 2018 and 2019 (U.S. Attorney’s Office, CA)
10,000 — Number of fraudulent reservations made in association with the above scam over the course of about one year (U.S. Justice Department)
10,000 — Number of renters the FBI estimates were victims of rental scams in 2023 (FBI)
24 hours — The amount of time a Washington State scammer had once they toured a property in which to pretend they are the owners and scam potential renters out of security deposits, fees, and first and last months’ rent (total per person: $1,500) (Oregon Public Broadcasting)
Rently’s smart products do not create 24-hour windows of access but, instead, protect investors and investments using biometrics, machine learning, and other “smart” devices and software. Learn more at Rently.com.
Sidebar 2
An Overview of Rently’s Solutions
While Rently and the company’s clients strive to develop increasingly secure combinations of products and services to keep all parties involved in the leasing and renting relationship safe, the outside world often sees fraud in an industry and villainizes the security systems protecting that industry rather than the bad actors behind the actual fraud. For example, while traditional lockboxes have long been acknowledged as a weak point in asset security, Rently’s interactive systems may be confused with traditional lockboxes and even targeted by consumer advocates if there is not adequate education in the marketplace.
“Renter demand for self-guided tours is incredibly high, with 83% of prospective renters saying they prefer this option and 42% wanting to tour outside of regular business hours,” said Becca Nevarez, Rently’s senior director of marketing. She described the multiple layers of security living on the software platform behind every Rently box, including listing verification, property owner verification, rental-scam education on an individual basis for would-be renters, identity verification and facial biometric screening, contact-detail verification, credit verification, and advanced location-based technologies associated with self-guided tours. “This helps protect against scams while ensuring the secure, frictionless experience that meets the needs of renters,” Nevarez said. “No other self-showing provider offers this level of security measures.”
Nevarez also noted owners use Rently to great effect on their personal properties. “Owners are able to install smart, keyless locks (like the Smart Bolt, for example) that are much more secure than leaving keys in a lockbox since there is no key handoff and an auto-lock feature,” she said. “All the security measures of our platform are applied regardless of the access device in use, and Rently recommends owners install smart-home technology for the highest level of security and asset protection.”
Below is an itemized list of Rently’s hardware and software solutions and the industries in which they may be applied:
Industries
» Single-family
» Multifamily
» Build-to-Rent
» Student Housing
Solutions
» Self-guided tours
» Smart Home
» Agent Scheduler
» Leasing Automation
» Vacancy Advertising
» Lead Management
Hardware
» Rently Smart Bolt
» Rently Access Panel with Intercom
» Rently Smart Home Hub
» Full Suite of Rently Devices
Rently has facilitated more than 20 million self-tours to date, deployed tens of thousands of smart-home devices, and offers all-in-one smart leasing platforms and automation services for every phase of the leasing cycle. Learn more at Rently.com.
