
Show HN: Tenence – Making Renting Easier - faisalkhalid80
http://www.tenence.com
======
josho
Someone on your team is a talented designer and has built a beautiful site.
Unfortunately, the scroll-jacking and large visuals take away from the UX side
of things. Ask yourself which of those images clarifies your service and which
distract from the message you are trying to communicate.

Oh, and change 'Our business model explained'. That language makes sense for
startup junkies and business folk. But, has no place on your landing page,
something like 'How we'll help you find a renter' is much more relevant to
your audience.

~~~
aaronmacy
> Unfortunately, the scroll-jacking and large visuals take away from the UX
> side of things.

This. I didn't proceed through site because I can't stand scroll-jacking.

~~~
ams6110
Same. I don't have time to figure out what novelty you've substituted for
normal scrolling, but when there's no scroll bar and "Page Down" doesn't do
anything, I move on.

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sparky_z
It took me quite a while to figure out that this was a service _for renters_ ,
not a property management service for absentee landlords. The home page text
reinforces this because at first glance

"Rent your Home through Tenence"

reads more like

"Rent [out] your home [to other people] through Tenence"

than

"Rent your [new] home [from any landlord] through Tenence"

You can read a lot of the following pages through that same lens without any
red flags (just what seems like awkward phrasing in a few spots, like "You
become a member. And we then do everything on our books (as a company) to rent
out the place you want."). It wasn't until I got all the way to the
"Membership Benefits" page that everything became clear, At that point, I had
to go back and reread everything from a renter's perspective to figure out
what the business even was.

I gave this a hell of a lot more focused attention because it was presented on
HN. If I'd stumbled on this page some other way, I would have written it off
in 10 seconds. "I don't own a home. I'm not the target audience here."

~~~
gigatexal
Yes I thought this was a service that basically would be my rental agency for
my property but it's not. It's like a wework

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beager
It's a shame that a tagline like "Making Renting Easier" resolves to something
that is, even after a few goes at parsing, still fully opaque to me. I clicked
through because, as a sufferer of the abusive NYC renting game, anything to
ameliorate the hassle of renting, and anything to disintermediate low-effort-
but-high-cost real estate agents, are attractive to me. But without some
insight into the true nature of your business, I'm left not just uninterested,
but confused.

What is your business? Who is involved in it? Is it an REIT that manages its
holdings for renters? Are you a marketplace? What specific services do you
provide? Who are your customers?

~~~
faisalkhalid80
Hi, founder here. Feedback noted and I'll try to explain the concept a bit
better. In London, which is where I am, if you rent a flat as a company -
which a lot of international companies do, for their employees - you get
treated really well by letting agents + landlords. As a corporate renter you
generally don't have to pay a security deposit; you get favourable contractual
terms; and you only need to provide your financial and other documents once.
All in all it's much easier and better to rent as a corporate vs renting as an
individual. So there is an arbitrage opportunity. We enable individuals to
capture this arbitrage opportunity. We provide the 'company' which rents the
flat - whichever flat you want - for you.

~~~
beager
Thanks for that. I understand the idea now. I hope you'll be able to convey it
as well on your site and through your marketing. I would also not shy away
from marketing the business as narrowly-focused on London, if that's where you
are, and if that's where the prevalence of the dynamic you mentioned is
greatest. Because looking at it, I feel like it could help me rent a place in
NYC, Nebraska, Jakarta, or New Zealand. If Londoners are likely to comprehend
the concept anyway, it would only help to be specific about your geographic
focus.

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cialowicz
> Our staff are here to serve you. Fallen sick and need someone to go buy your
> meds? We will do it. And do much more.

Why is this part of the service? Seems really strange to offer that.

~~~
aetherson
I agree, the concierge services felt like a weirdly distinct service.

Also, the business model seems weird. Why would someone pay $100/month for,
hopefully, years in order to cut down on one-time costs and hassles around the
initial renting? Regardless of whether it ends up being cost-beneficial, it
just seemed like a weird match to me. You're "subscribing" to a service that
does a bunch for you in month 1 and then nothing in later months.

Maybe that's what the concierge part of the service is meant to address, but
I'm very dubious of that portion of the business.

~~~
achow
One has to dig through to discover this..

Once the member has finalized a place, we take over. We deal with onboarding,
the security deposit, and rent the flat for the member... After the member
moves in, we provide him/her with a host of services ranging from helping them
when they are home and sick, to coordinating repairs.

As mentioned by others, the whole site is making a heavy weather out of simple
(and seems like a useful) concept.

~~~
aetherson
No I understand. But:

1\. I don't think that coordinating repairs is a big deal. I mean, maybe I've
just been lucky with landlords, but I feel like generally when I've needed
repairs, I've called my landlord, or emailed them, and then that's that. And
repairs are a far-from-constant problem -- most months, my need for someone to
coordinate my repairs is zero.

2\. The concierge service is... well, I don't know. I mean, we could certainly
imagine a concierge service that provided $100 in value per month. But it
feels like staffing a concierge service company is _totally different_ from
staffing a renter's agreement arbitrage company, and that there's no
particular synergy between the two, and also I kind of doubt the ability of a
small startup that's clearly focusing on the "renter's agreement arbitrage"
business to provide a really useful concierge service.

~~~
dajohnson89
Happy for your luck, but you most certainly have been lucky on the repair
front. Slumlords are a thing.

~~~
nommm-nommm
Slumlords are absolutely a thing, but adding a middleman between you and a
slumlord has questionable value. Nor are people who have £100 a month to blow
likely to have slumlords in the first place.

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aerovistae
All I got was a grey background with the logo in the middle. Nothing else
loaded and after 10 seconds I left.

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jiangth
I'm actually very interested in the service but the site is really hard to
consume. Sorry

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paulbennett
Why as a renter would I want to use your service over a traditional letting
agency? They also provide legal services, handling of finances and often
handling of maintenance and repairs etc.

The main difference I see here is using clout as a company to reduce or remove
the rent deposit, and as other comments have mentioned some additional
concierge services, is that worth an extra fee on top of my rent?

I have rented in the UK before, I am currently a landlord in the UK. Filling
in paperwork, providing references etc. isn't particularly difficult or time
consuming and I wouldn't pay £99/month myself personally to have that done for
me. _Maybe_ a one off fee.

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OhSoHumble
The text on 'our services' is hard to read.

I read the logo as renence.

I have literally never heard the phrase 'onboarding' used outside of a
business organization. If I was explaining this to my mom as "yeah, it lets
you skip onboarding when you're renting a new place" she would look at me
funny.

The URL for this site ends in a .com but the price is listed in pounds. Where
is this service offered?

I can't scroll back up; I can only move down the page. Make it so that the
mouse scroll bar can trigger transitions?

I feel like 'services' and 'business model' should be swapped.

All in all, I really the business model.

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sushobhan
I love the logo!!! Apart from that, it's a good looking mess where most of the
things aren't relevant especially the pictures used. As there are lack of
information on the 1st and 2nd fold, most of the traffic might leave before
proceeding any further. Scroll jacking is just killing your site. Also for
better conversion try to give one CTA on each fold. About content, think who
are your target audience and what you want to showcase them, accordingly write
your content. All the best :)

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franciscop
I am curious about the economies of it and scalability. From the high
price/month I'm thinking it's not easily scalable for you. Which makes sense
as paying 99L/month doesn't make sense for most of the world. But have you
thought about doing a self-managed version for a % of the renting price? You'd
be able to reach a much larger audience.

~~~
faisalkhalid80
Interesting. What do you mean by self managed version? (Founder here)

~~~
franciscop
As @foota said, what I mean is that now you have 3 steps from what I read in
the landing page:

1\. You find a place

2\. We rent it

3\. We manage it

What I mean is to offer the step 3 as optional; charge for the step 2 a % (I
believe standard for real state agencies is 1 month, just A/B test it) and
change the step 3:

\- Keep it as is but optional.

\- Set it up so there are services the user can get and pay as they go.

\- Make the rent payment through your platform and get a small % of that.

AFAIK the real problem is setting up initially, the management month-to-month
for a long term stay is more of an occasional thing and making it 99L/month
mandatory would limit the use a lot.

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bernardino
In similar note to Tenence, Cozy ([https://cozy.co](https://cozy.co)) is also
pretty interesting.

P.s. The user interface needs work for both web and mobile. Just keep it
simple.

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Kiro
Unusable site on mobile (Android, Chrome). Every click and swipe/scroll
trigger all these confusing whole page transitions that make no sense. I
thought my browser was bugging out at first.

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simplehuman
Page does not load

Edit: turns out it loads, just unusable on mobile.

~~~
bbcbasic
Yes gave up too. Have a fairly modern phone, loads most sites well. I can
watch Netflix on ellular data no problems. But this site is unusable.

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msy
I cannot read the logo, it would be more appropriate for a sci-fi game.

~~~
pmalynin
In fact, those E's look an awful lot like those of EVE Online.

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oferzelig
Site is down now.

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doodlebugging
Landlord here with a few questions (one single-family home in USA). I may not
be the target landlord but your service is interesting.

What is the incentive for me to use your service by renting to what is
essentially a middleman tenant management company? I understand that you are
currently in the UK and may possibly be operating in other areas or have plans
to do so. What advantages are there for a landlord to deal indirectly with
tenants? What value does the middleman add on my end?

I currently screen tenants (been working on that today in fact) so that I can
understand who they are, where they are in life and how they view the world. I
interview each prospective tenant to help me understand the things about my
property that may be problematic for them to use or maintain. At the end of
the day I really just want to have tenants who appreciate the work that I put
into preparing my property for them to use as a home during their tenancy. I
need to have people that I can trust to help me maintain it and to keep it
clean for the next guy.

Where does your service add value to my operation other than possibly in pre-
screening tenants for me or in guaranteeing that I am paid on time? If you are
functioning as a middleman involved in placing corporate personnel in suitable
housing at company expense while they are on temporary assignment where do I
benefit? What incentive does a tenant using your service have to use the
rental property responsibly, avoiding damages and reporting maintenance issues
in a timely manner so that the property owner can address small issues before
they become major repair problems?

Assuming that the tenant reports a maintenance issue to your service - do you
handle service and repair? Do you contact repair person? Do you describe the
problem and schedule repair? Do you keep tenant in the loop concerning ingress
and egress for repairs? Do you ensure that contractors and service personnel
are paid so that there can be no liens placed on my property by unhappy
contractors? Do you use your own vetted contractors and tradesmen or do you
use mine? In my case, I use people who are very familiar with the property
since they have been helping me maintain it for more than a decade.

I'd be interested in hearing your reply.

Also on a different note - I read all the text on the site that I could find.
Like others I was initially confused by the phrasing in that I thought you may
be offering some sort of tenant locator or screening process service for
landlords. I figured it out though. I did find one thing that you should
change that I haven't seen mentioned. On the "Our Services" page under the
"Documentation" section there is a grammatical error that you should fix. The
second line currently says: "Your provide: nothing." You should change that to
read "You provide: nothing."

Good luck to you in your endeavors!

~~~
paulbennett
In the UK (and I'm sure many other places in the world) rental agencies
already provide the services you are describing. As a UK single-family home
landlord I ask my rental agency to find me tenants, run background checks,
handle deposits, rent and other finances etc. For this I pay them 5-10% of the
rental income/month. They will also handle repairs etc. if I need them to and
bill me accordingly. This is a great service for me as a landlord who lives
abroad because it greatly reduces the amount of time I have to spend dealing
with my property to maybe a couple of hours every few months.

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snowpeas
"I've thought about this for five minutes so I'm as much an expert as lifelong
landlords"

~~~
ryan-allen
How do you know that the owners/staff aren't experienced as landlords or
professional property managers?

