WATCH: The rental housing market can also be a challenge and as Ted Chernecki reports, Vancouver may soon benefit from a tenants’ website first launched in New York.
VANCOUVER – A new website will soon be available for people wanting to rent in Vancouver. Its goal is to ensure people don’t end up in a bad situation or with a bad landlord.
RentCheck is a search engine that not only finds rental properties but also rates them and provides feedback on landlords. The program has already rolled out in New York and will be going into operation here soon, along with Toronto, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Dallas.
Co-creator Yale Fox said they started it because a good home can be hard to find. Users can search the database by price, neighbourhood, size, amenities but also the quality of life in the building.
Each building gets a rating from A to F and renters can post reviews.
“These reviews add more colour to what it’s like to live in a building,” said Fox. “If there’s one that says the landlord didn’t return my security deposit, maybe something happened there, if there’s five that say that, then our algorithms will start to naturally pick up on these things.”
“When you’re leaving a review, although we allow everybody to do it anonymously, we do some checking to make sure they’re human and it’s not someone leaving multiple reviews on buildings they haven’t lived in.”
Fox said this site will help landlords fix problems or respond to issues.
The idea is welcomed by the City of Vancouver.
“Well there’s not much currently and I think this website would be a great addition to help tenants,” said a city spokesperson.
“The City of Vancouver does have a Standards of Maintenance website and so you can look up complaints that have been filed with the city, and it says they are either ongoing or they have been resolved. There’s a website where you can track bed bugs, bed bug look-up, but that’s about it.”
Fox said the City of Vancouver has a good open data program, which will allow RentCheck to work successfully. Much of the information about the buildings comes from a city’s open data and public records.
“Part of the magic in RentCheck is that we’re rating all these landlords from best to worst,” said Fox. “We hope that these landlords that are going above and beyond the call of duty, that are clear A+ landlords, our system is automatically going to promote them to the top.”
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