Ireland's housing crisis has been marred by a lack of housing supply as well huge demand for housing as the country's population continues to grow.
As more and more people bid for a smaller pool of houses, prospective tenants may take risks they otherwise wouldn't if housing was more available.
Conor McGarry and his company RentDodo aims to solve the various issues facing tenants whether they are being scammed by untrustworthy landlords or ones that post fake ads for their lettings.
The idea for the website came about after seeing how convoluted the whole renting process was.
"There is no standardised approach, there is a lot of paper work and it is very inconsistent. There is no consistent approach from one letting agent to the next.
"The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) does not even have anything on it and do not want to touch this area," he says.
Mr McGarry says overall the process is "incredibly vague" and can lead to a lot of confusion for tenants.
What ends up happening is that you will have people sending out their details to various letting agents even before they get a viewing just so they can be in the mix.
"You have people sending information to mailboxes with bank statements, references and copies of passports and that is sitting in dozens of people's mailboxes just to get a tenancy," Mr McGarry says.
The idea of RentDodo is to have a service that makes the whole process digital and, more importantly more secure.
One of the main parts of their platform is what they call TenantCert, which is a safe way for tenants to share their details with landlords.
"You simply upload a photo of your passport and within 20 or 30 seconds we can come back and verify if it is legitimate. Along with that system is Live ID verification, which allows users to see which landlords and tenants have been verified."
ID verification
Once the ID is live, you can decide who you want to share it with and apply for any property where it is on the platform or outside of it. Users can also terminate who they have shared their info with at anytime.
"Generally there is a preference for using letting agents because they are regulated, but beyond that there is very little verification of landlords," he says.
The realm of flat sharing or room sharing is "a bit of a grey area" and there is "practically no regulation around that side of the sector," he says.
"Tenants are really going on their own wits, and we recommend doing a check on landlords or room hosts that they speak to."
The platform also has a feature where they verify landlords and people that host a room. Anyone who wants to let a room on RentDodo has to be verified beforehand.
It helps eliminate any rental scammers. You have a huge migrant population in Ireland who are being exploited. They are under pressure to get a roof over their heads and are being taken advantage of.
He says: "It helps eliminate any rental scammers. You have a huge migrant population in Ireland who are being exploited. They are under pressure to get a roof over their heads and are being taken advantage of."
Even worse is people using social media sites to pose as letting agents. "I saw a scam last week on one of these social media sites. They gave off the impression they were running an office, and they were asking for a deposit before a viewing."
"No regulated letting agency would do that," he says.
If any tenant is concerned about a particular landlord Mr McGarry advises people to check the RTB website where you can see if they were involved in any dispute previously.
In his eyes, doing so should almost be "due-diligence" for tenants before going to a viewing. He also advises people to ask landlords during a viewing to ask for the RTB number of the property.
In recent years we have seen landlords try to cram people into shared premises where everyone shares the facilities.
When screening letters on RentDodo, they will ask the owners how many people will be staying in a room and ask them to provide pictures of the rooms themselves.
No charge
Mr McGarry also says they are looking to grow the "empty nesters" market through their platform.
"Despite having a housing crisis in Ireland, we still have a low occupancy rate per household. Whether they let out one of the rooms or more, it could be a good source of income for them."
The website has only been up since the start of the week, and they have been getting positive feedback so far.
While there are similar, like RentDodo in other countries, one of the main differences is the fact that tenants are not charged to use the service.
"In our eyes, tenants have it hard enough as it is with sky-high rents. Some of these sites have you paying €45 just for the verification process."
"In our eyes, tenants have it hard enough as it is with sky-high rents. Some of these sites have you paying €45 just for the verification process."
Because of this, the platform is free for tenants to use, while landlords and letting agents are charged a fee to use it, seeing as it is essentially a service for them.
One of the other unique features of their platform is the income verification tool.
"We came up with a solution that means tenants do not have to share bank statements or payslips.
"The user connects it to their bank account, and we have an algorithm that goes back six months and verifies if their income matches what they stated."
The idea is to make the process as paper free as possible and avoid the back and forth of having to send various documents to letting agents.
While it is only early days for RentDodo, it is clearly filling a gap in the market that has been sorely missing.
The housing crisis is not something that can be solved overnight, but improving the rental process for both sides of the equation is a good first step.
