Occubuy wants to help people own a home through renting

Property technology platform Occubuy wants to help people save for their first home deposit through renting.

The company’s mission is to “help young people save ‘dead’ money on rent and to bring the age of ownership down.”

Occubuy has two core ideas, making the rental relationship between tenants and property managers better and helping renters save for their first home while renting.

Nathan Aranha, co-founder at Occubuy spoke to Digital Nation about how the platform works to through gamification.  

He said they are creating financial literacy tools to enable better financial literacy and more financial well-being for that user.

“We've got gamified products to teach you about the markets and investing and saving. Then what we're doing is creating a rent-to-buy scenario where you can save money on market-paid rent,” he said.

“Instead of spending all that dead money on rent, you can now save some of that money, and it goes towards your deposit.”

Aranha explained that there was a need for better system for both tenants and property managers, so they ensured their platform and app could benefit both parties.

“We've created a beautiful tenant management experience, the real estate agent can manage the tenant better,” he said.

“On the rental side, it's engaging with the renter to help them better understand their property, they understand their cost of expenses and that's what our app does. There's a lot of inbuilt tools in that app that creates these cost savings for the user.”

Aranha said by creating savings mechanisms and more financial wellbeing, he said they’ve gained interest from property managers to better engage their renters.

“Through building communities and providing the cost savings across the community and by creating a gamified financial literacy education, we can engage the renter a lot better,” he said.

From that Occubuy is able to relay that information of the renter to the property manager or homeowner.

“They liked to see their renters engaged now, and especially as the Gen Z, Millennials were hard to engage,” he said.

Aranha said they are trying to eliminate the paper processes and help the agent create a better profile of their renters.

“The 100 people that are currently using our app and paying rent through our app, are now creating better profiles for themselves,” he said.

“If they did go to move on to another property, we can provide that information to the new agent, and potentially get a faster approval on that rental for occupied customers.”

David Cain, co-founder at Occubuy said they want to create social impact.

“That's our main thesis, we want to drive a shared value concept where everyone can win. In the past, these rent-to-buy solutions there's been a winner and a loser,” he explained.

“We're looking to solve everyone's problems, in fact, not just the millennial Gen Zs, but also the sellers. We want to make an impact both socially and on other fronts.”