[NEWS] Flatfair, the ‘deposit-free’ renting platform, raises $11M led by Index Ventures – Loganspace

Flatfair, a London-primarily primarily primarily based fintech that lets landlords offer “deposit-free” renting to tenants, has raised $11 million in funding.

The Sequence A round is led byIndex Ventures,with participation from Riot Ventures, Adevinta, Greg Marsh (founder of Onefinestay), Jeremy Helbsy (feeble Savills CEO) and Taavet Hinrikus (TransferWise co-founder).

With the sleek capital, Flatfair says it plans to rent a “major” number of product engineers, data scientists and trade pattern consultants.

The startup will additionally put money into constructing out sleek choices as it seems to be to expand its platform with “a focal level on making renting fairer and more transparent for landlords and tenants.”

“With the brand new deposit of £1,110 across England and Wales being fair accurate timid of the nationwide residing wage, tenants combat to pay costly deposits when coming into into their sleek home, often paying double deposits in between tenancies,” Flatfair co-founder and CEO Franz Doerr tells me when requested to frame the topic the startup has unprejudiced out to resolve.

“This creates money movement points for tenants, in divulge for those with families. Some tenants cease up financing the deposit by blueprint of chums and family and even accrue costly bank card debt. The latter can get a unhealthy influence on the tenant’s credit standing, extra limiting crucial rep entry to to credit for things that actually matter in a tenant’s existence.”

To resolve this, Fatfair’s “insurance-backed” price technology offers tenants with the solution to pay a per-tenancy membership rate as an replace of a elephantine deposit. They attain this by authorising their bank myth by blueprint of debit card with Flatfair, and when it’s time to switch out, any cease-of-tenancy prices are handled by blueprint of the Flatfair portal, alongside side dispute resolution.

So, shall we embrace, pretty than having to search out a rental deposit same to a month’s lease, which in principle it’s seemingly you’ll presumably maybe presumably rep attend even as you switch out sans any cease-of-tenancy prices, with Fatfair you pay just a few quarter of that as a non-refundable rate.

For certain, there are pros and cons to each, but for tenants that are cashflow restricted, the startup’s mannequin in any case offers an replace financing option.

As smartly as, tenants registered with Flatfair are given a “belief rating” that can trot up over time, helping them switch tenancy more with out anguish in the prolonged bustle. The firm is additionally trialing the utilization of Initiate Banking to encourage with credit assessments by analysing transaction historical past to envision that you just’ve got got paid lease usually and on time up to now.

Landlords are said to admire the mannequin. Recent Flatfair purchasers embody major property householders and agents, corresponding to Greystar, Areas for Folks and CBRE. “Before Flatfair, deposits were doubtlessly the most productive occupy of tenancy safety that landlords relied on,” claims Doerr.

Within the tournament of a dispute over cease-of-tenancy prices, each landlords and tenants are requested so that you just can add proof to the Flatfair platform and to are trying and pick the difference amicably. Within the occasion that they’ll’t, the case is referred by Flatfair to an unprejudiced adjudicator by blueprint ofmydeposits, a U.Okay. authorities-backed deposit method with which the firm is partnering.

“Within the form of case, the entire proof is submitted to mydeposits and as well they come attend with a dedication internal 24 hours,” explains Doerr. “[If] the adjudicator says that the tenant owes money, we invoice the tenant who then has 5 days to pay. If the tenant doesn’t pay, we charge their bank myth… What’s key here is having the proof. Folks are most often happy to pay if the costs are fascinating and where optimistic proof exists, there’s much less to argue about.”

Extra broadly, Doerr says there’s major scope for digitisation across the lift-to-let sector and that the massive imaginative and prescient for Flatfair is to invent an “working method” for leases.

“The fundamental understanding is to streamline processes across the tenancy to invent revenue and financial savings alternatives for landlords and agents, whereas promoting an even bigger buyer trip, affordability and fairness for tenants,” he says.

“We’re engaged on a host of intriguing sleek choices that we’ll be in a position to chat about in the upcoming months, but we search alternatives to automate more functions internal the existence cycle of a tenancy and declare there are pretty loads of massive efficiency financial savings to be made by unifying frail programs, dumping frail paper programs and streamlining cumbersome admin. Providing a scoring method for tenants is a enormous come of encouraging better behaviour and, given housing represents most other folks’s biggest expense, it’s easiest accurate renters get as a blueprint to make up their credit standing and revenue from paying on time.”