The Technology That Aims to Disrupt the Security Deposit

Silicon Valley has long had a fascination with transforming tedious analog tasks into frictionless, touch-screen enabled transactions. Having thusly disrupted taxi rides, banking, and shopping, apartment-hunting appears to be next on the list. Mom-and-pop landlords are slowly being replaced with tech-savvy ones, who use cryptocurrency, Venmo, and other apps instead of rent checks slid under the door. Now the online rental platform Rentberry is promising to reinvent the security deposit, too.

As my colleague Kriston Capps described it last year, “Rentberry turns Craigslist into eBay.” The service invites potential renters to fill out comprehensive online profiles and participate in an auction-style bidding process for housing—the best offer (and the most responsible-looking renter) wins. The company first ruffled feathers in San Francisco last summer, stoking fears that the site could jack up already outrageous rental prices. Company CEO Alex Lubinsky claimed that Rentberry’s approach would save some renters money by driving down prices in areas of lower demand; instead, in San Francisco and San Jose it raised rents by 5 percent. The service grew quickly from its 2015 California roots: Today it lists more than 220,000 properties in 4,948 cities and is used by more than 120,000 people.