Casalova is a Toronto-based startup offering an online platform for tenants and landlords. (www.casalova.ca) The free program launched last week, with an offer of a $50,000 rent guarantee to protect landlords in the event of tenant default.
“Casalova was built from our own renting experiences. We were shocked at how long, broken, and fragmented the renting process was so we set out to create a solution that worked for both landlords and tenants,” Ray Taaeb, CEO and co-founder of Casalova, said. “After speaking with hundreds of landlords and real estate investors, we found that they have little to no protection in the rental market. Every landlord’s biggest fear is their tenant not paying rent, which is a loss the majority cannot afford to risk.”
Landlords list their properties on the database and Casalova takes care of finding, vetting, and choosing securing the best tenants.
“Casalova’s proprietary algorithm matches landlords with qualified tenants by determining a Tenant Risk Score which takes into account factors that have historically been shown to predict whether a tenant is high risk or not,” the company said in a release. “Everything from professional photography to showing properties and securing rent payments is handled by a team of professional Casalova agents.”
Casalova promises the default guarantee will cover rent until a defaulted tenant becomes evicted or until the $50,000 limit is reached.
“The Guarantee is in place to combat the very one-sided regulations in Canada that don’t offer any protection for landlords against delinquent and ‘professional’ tenants. We are offering a promise to landlords that we believe our proprietary algorithm will match them with a dependable and reliable tenant,” Taaeb said. “Prior to developing the algorithm, most landlords just relied on a credit score to assess the tenant risk. This form of screening is outdated and one dimensional, so we decided to look at a multitude of factors that actually affects tenant reliability.”
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