Match, Meet & Live With Your Ideal Roommate in Flateasy
Overview
Flateasy endeavour a solution for the new market by tailoring the user experience to the unique aspects of a co-living relationship.
As Hong Kong property rental market prices continue to rise, more and more people are turning to flatshare to manage their living costs. From statistics published by SCMP, in 2018, over 209,000 people lives in subdivided flats among which 50,000 are school aged.
There is no flat rental solution designed for co-tenants, the only channel for tenants who are looking for a room to rent or hosts who are looking for roommates are social media but the information is hard to track and not reliable.
The challenge
- The matching between budget, facility requirement (e.g. need furniture), schedule (move in and out) and individual preference (e.g. early bird v.s. late owl) among the sub-tenants makes the apartment finding experience more complicated and time-consuming when information is not available from public sources
- To evaluate a tenant or landlord, we need consistent feedback throughout the property rental lifecycle (from apartment viewing to contracting to servicing), but there is no simple and transparent way to collect, analyze and publish these information
- Collecting and tracking payments among multiple tenant is a big challenge for landlords, many of them have to chase multiple times as most tenants are paying rents via bank transfer or cheque
Get Insights from Tenants
75%
earn less than HK$20,000* per month
*The median income in Hong Kong in 2020Q is HK$19,000
60%
are professional with a full time job
69%
have lived in a shared flat at least once in the past 2 years
Understood from the tenants
- The balancing between the budget, roommate and location are challenging for renters
82.7% of the interviewee has a budget of less than HK$10K; budget (59.6%), roommate matching (32.7%), and location (26.9%) are the top 3 challenges people face when looking for a flat to share; - People have different lease needs
37% want to live independently while 57.3% are looking for a place to live while studying abroad or traveling; 40.4% are looking for a short lease (less than 6 months) and 50% are renting for over a year; - People are not resistant to finding strangers as roommates
51.9% are living with strangers together (19.2% online roommate finders, 30.8% social media; 1.9% referral); a good personality and living habit is the most important thing when finding a roommate; - Get clarity of the financial consequences and is key for a new tenant
Lease terms (50%), utility bills (42.3%), upfront cost (34.6%) are amongst the topics a renter wish to know most before renting start
Get insights from Landlords
78%
are hiring real estate agencies to help renting out their place(s)
60%
have been renting out their place for more than 3 years
63%
of the units are listed on at least one website
Understood from the landlords
- Most of the landlords are open to subletting but they do not want to bother with the extra effort: 75% are willing to accept multi-tenants as long as they do not need to spend more time and money managing the tenants;
- People value different criteria when choosing v.s. living with roommates: while cleanness (94.2%), and trustworthy (73.1%) are the top considerations when people choose their roommates; lack of respect of my privacy (76.9%) and bad personal hygiene (73.1%) are what really matters when living with roommates
- Most of the landlords have experienced late payment: 88% had reminded tenants to pay at least once; 55% are willing to give discount if the tenants settle their rents upfront.
Solutions
Seamless Onboarding Journeys
We designed a different onboarding journey for tenant and landlord, understanding their needs so we can curate a list of results for them in 3 mins, once a tenant found a place they like, they can easily book a view or take to the landlord;
Sustainable Renting Experience
We understood a rental property goes from available to occupied in cycles so we keep ongoing monitoring over the lease period to ensure full utilization, for tenants who do not have a fixed date to start the lease, they can choose to “watch” the rooms they like and once it becomes available, they will get notified;
Enhancing Review Mechanism
We combined gamification and review mechanism to improve conversion, both tenants and landlords are asked to give feedback multiple times through the lease period, making the final rating more accurate;
All-rounded Renting & Leasing Ecosystem
We created as an all-in-one, hassle-free lease and payment experience, when tenant decide to move in, they only need to confirm the agreement online, enter their credit card or bank account information and select a payment date; landlord saves the effort to chase late payment which is done automatically
