Roommates can be a pain the ass: Dirty dishes in the sink, missing food in the fridge, random uninvited guests, and worst of all, they’re behind on their rent. To solve this problem, a trio of young entrepreneurs developed RentShare, an online system that enables roommates to pay their portion of the rent and utilities directly using a checking account or credit/debit card.
How It Works
RentShare takes care of reminding roommates of due dates, collecting the money, and sending the landlord a single rent check (and detailed note) each month. To avoid missing payments, roommates have the option of setting up auto-pay and can also use the program to settle household debts such as groceries, toiletries, water, etc. For example, if one roommate has purchased food for the entire flat, his/her monthly total would go down while their roommate’s total would increase to offset the expense.
To make money, RentShare charges a small convenience fee every time a RentShare user pays through the site, whether it’s a rent payment, security deposit, or utility bill. For credit and debit card payments, RentShare charges 2.9% per transaction and a $1.95 for payments made with a bank account. As registered users, roommates receive free rent payment tracking, a free expense calculator, and free e-mail reminders. What about the landlords? Landlords are not required to register and their involvement in the process isn’t necessary. RentShare does the work and landlords simply cash the checks.
About RentShare
RentShare is the work of Ian Halpern, Christopher Toppino, and Trevor Geise. Halpern, who serves the company’s president, is a former engineer who bolted from the corporate world to focus on his own passion projects including Siphon, Zimr, and RentShare. Toppino acts as the company’s vice president and founded a corporate production company called Walking Whale. The third partner, Trevor Geise, is the VP of Customer Acquisition, and has been involved in a number of self-sustaining companies such as Voonder.com, BoomVisibility.com and OmnosticProject.com.
