Subletting has become a necessary evil for many Berkeley students. We pay exorbitant rent prices and the inflexible nature of 12-month leases creates a challenging situation for people studying abroad or leaving Berkeley for the summer. Thus, it's financially untenable to pay rent for a place we're not living in.
I lived in a sublet last semester and I currently have a subletter. I've had countless conversations with my friends and peers about their subletting experiences. The consensus is clear: subletting is confusing and hard.
The current process involves making Craigslist posts, sharing Instagram stories, texting friends, sending Slacks to your club, and stalking Facebook groups. We sift through the depths of the internet, filled with spam and scammy content, trying to find an elusive needle in a haystack.
Berkeley Sublet is a dedicated marketplace for sublets, a platform designed specifically to meet the unique needs of Berkeley students. We want our marketplace to feel personal, secure, and simple. That's the vision behind the initial version of our site.
In less than a minute, users can create a listing and place it on our interactive map. This gives immediate exposure to the network of Berkeley students, interns, and professionals searching for housing in the area. Addresses remain secure, and contact information is only shared with verified users who have created an account.
For prospective tenants, we're building a suite of tools to streamline the search process, making it easy to find the right sublet. We want to cut through the noise and deliver high-quality, relevant listings.
With version 0.0 of our site live, our next steps are to focus on improving the site based on student feedback and to begin marketing ourselves. We want to prove that our solution is significantly better than existing alternatives. If we build a strong network effect within the Berkeley community, we hope to expand our reach in concentric circles, gradually covering more schools.
We plan to keep working on building new features in our free time. In the near future, we will incorporate features such as introductory video calls between parties, standard sublease agreements, and an integrated payment system.
Please feel free to reach out with any questions, comments, concerns, or ideas.
Go Bears!
- Adam