Two local start-ups combine to connect tenants, landlords for unit repairs
August 4, 2021
Daniel Caudle
Rent Panda and Bidmii have launched a collaboration that will streamline the ability of tenants, landlords, and contractors to connect and repair units
Rent Panda and Bidmii have launched a collaboration that will streamline the ability of tenants, landlords, and contractors to connect and repair units
A collaboration between two local start-ups, Rent Panda and Bidmii, aims to streamline the communication between tenants, landlords and contractors to make renting and maintaining property trouble-free.
The partnership seeks to ensure a speedy repair when property maintenance issues arise by removing the middleman and listing the tenant's repair needs directly to the Bidmii app where contracts can bid on the project immediately.
Tenants upload photos of the work the rental unit needs, including a brief description, on Rent Panda where it is then cross-posted to Bidmii and the bidding by contractors can begin.
Hart Togman, co-founder of Rent Panda, said the partnership helps both landlords and tenants by providing the tools to properly manage the relationship by enabling a repair and maintenance ticket to be pushed seamlessly through the Rent Panda system.
“As a tenant what you would typically do, if you know a leaky sink is happening, you take a photo of that leaky sink, go on Rent Panda to upload that photo and a little description of what’s happening, and then that job would get posted to Bidmii,” said Togman.
Once uploaded, the landlord receives a notification of the newly created maintenance ticket and through the Bidmii integration, the job can receive bids, and be assigned and awarded to a contractor.
When the job is completed, Rent Panda sends a notification to alert the tenant the posted repairs are done.
By eliminating the need for the tenant to communicate to the landlord the repair process can begin a lot quicker, thus saving a headache on the tenants' side and doing away with the broken telephone of what the repairs entail.
Jon Christensen, CEO of Bidmii, said the partnership increases the communication between contractors, landlords and tenants.
To date, the current fastest project to get posted, receive bids, and be awarded is 10 minutes.
This latest feat beat the previous record of 24 minutes - which also saw the plumbing project fixed in the same afternoon.
"This whole system is to save everybody time," said Christensen. "The idea is that on both sides of the home improvement and home renovation equation there is a whole bunch of wasted time, and back and forths and all over the place. Because our system is so automated we are saving everybody time."
The collaboration comes from the companies founders seeking to help the housing situation in Guelph through housing vulnerable populations and wanting to improve the rental situation in the area.
The partnership is set to expand into the Thunder Bay region which is the region Rent Panda first launched in before expanding into Guelph.
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