Truelandlord Application

Nigeria has a housing shortage of 17 million units. This problem will worsen as the population grows from 200,000,000 to 264,000,000 by 2030. World Bank estimates that Nigeria needs $363 billion in investments to address the shortage but these investments are not being made because investors find the Nigerian housing industry unattractive. 

Our solution aims to make the housing industry attractive to investors by leveraging technology to reduce default rates on rents, promote information symmetry between landlords, tenants and agents, and foster the growth of Nigeria's mortgage industry. Our solution also promotes financial inclusion by efficiently connecting banks to under-served persons.

By driving investments into the global housing industry, our solution will create entrepreneurial opportunities for unemployed and underemployed people. Households will be able to afford houses closer to cities, thereby having access to better jobs and schools. The increased financial inclusion will also empower more households to accumulate wealth. 

The Nigerian housing industry is unattractive to investors due to problems of payment default, limited due diligence, market disequilibrium, and lack of access to credit. These problems discourage investors from investing in affordable housing and the shortfall in affordable housing in Nigeria is now 17 million units. This problem is expected to worsen as the country's population increases from 200 million to 264 million by 2030. 

The scarcity of affordable housing has created room for fraudsters to impersonate agents and landlords, to collect rents from multiple unsuspecting tenants on the same property before absconding.  

Landlords in Nigeria require tenants to pay rents for 12/24 months in advance, to mitigate default risk, but many tenants cannot afford such lump due to lack of access to credit. Tenants that end up complying often fail to do so after their initial 12/24 months tenancy expires.

The bedrock of the lack of access to credit and demand for advance rent is the unavailability of a robust credit database for counter-parties to verify credit histories of tenants and mortgage applicants. As a result, the mortgage to GDP Ratio in Nigeria is 0.6%, while those in the US and UK are 60% and 70%, respectively. 

Our solution is a mobile and web application that validates the information provided by tenants, agents, and landlords regarding their identities, credit history, and banking relationships, through its integration with credit agencies, banks, and government agencies. This will mitigate fraud and impersonation in the housing industry. 

It will aggregate reviews on rental properties and their landlords from previous tenants for potential tenants and present information on the best agents in each neighborhood based on the number of listings, reviews, and transaction history. It will be a tool for entrepreneurs to market their rental properties and estate agencies while improving their network.
  
Our solution will provide a cost-effective platform for banks to provide micro-standby letters of credit to landlords on behalf of tenants. This will reduce payment defaults, eliminate the need for advance rent payments, and make housing more affordable in Nigeria. It will also bring more people into the banking system so that they can save and access credit.

Our application will provide credit agencies with credit information on more people and promote better credit behavior, as people see improved tracking of their credit histories. These will boost Nigeria's mortgage industry and make its housing industry more attractive to investors. 

45% percent of Nigerians are unemployed or underemployed. 60 million Nigerian adults lack access to banking services. 17 million Nigerian households lack access to affordable housing, which affects their ability to live in cities where they have better chances to find jobs or start businesses.

Our team has conducted focus groups and market surveys on estate agents, landlords and tenants to understand their pain points. We have also consulted with banks and the investor community on their apathy to allocate capital to the housing sector. As we develop our solution, we will continue to engage with them as we complete and launch our MVP. We are mindful that their use of our application will provide better insight for subsequent versions.

Our solution addresses bottlenecks preventing over $300 billion in investments from the Nigerian housing industry. If these investments are made, lots of jobs will be created in the sector to reduce the rate of unemployment. The investments will increase the number of affordable housing units and households will be able to live in cities, where they can find better jobs, better schools, and more entrepreneurial opportunities. 

The lack of transparency and efficiency in the affordable housing industry in Nigeria has deprived it of investments that can provide jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities to improve the lives of the Nigerian populace. 

Our solution delivers an application that enhances transparency and efficiency to entrepreneurs and counter-parties in the affordable housing industry. It will also connect entrepreneurs in a manner that enables their businesses to grow as the industry grows. 

As the barriers to investment are addressed, more capital will flow into the industry through increased mortgages, and additional business and consumer credit. 

Our solution can also scale globally.

Before the arrival of the internet and software applications, real estate listings were placed in newspapers. Landlords, agents, and tenants communicated offline, and background checks on listed properties, tenants, and agents were performed offline. 

With the arrival of the internet, real estate listings moved online but users treated internet listings like print listings. They did not make full use of the additional features that the internet can support. For example, while a newspaper listing remains after the property has been rented, an internet listing can disappear when the property is rented. 

With the arrival of applications, many more things can now be done; background checks can be automated, negotiations between parties can be performed transparently within a social network, rental agreements may be managed with artificial intelligence, rents may be determined via online bidding, rents may be charged to tenants' bank accounts, the best agent in any city can be determined with crowd-sourced empirical evidence, and so much more.

Our solution relies on existing technology to the extent that Uber relies on existing technology. However, just like Uber brought car owners, drivers and riders together to effectively increase investments in shared vehicles, lower transportation costs and improve customer service, our solution will bring landlords, agents, and tenants together to increase investments in affordable housing, reduce rents and improve the experience of all parties. 

Our solution may be compared to Airbnb, but unlike Airbnb which focuses on short-stays and guests, it is focused on long-stays and tenants.

Our web application is powered by PHP and MySQL, riding on the Laravel Framework. 

Our mobile application is powered by Flutter software development kit and it is being developed for both Android and iOS.

Many widely used applications were built with PHP(e.g. facebook). 

MySQL is a well established relational database management system. 

Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit created by Google. It is used to develop applications for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux, Google Fuchsia and the web from a single codebase. 

Our desired outcome is to increase the number of affordable homes in the world, as well as, the number of jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities in the affordable housing industry. 

To achieve this outcome, we aim to drive more investments into affordable houses by removing the barriers discouraging investors from the industry. Our application promotes transparency and efficiency to tenants, agents, landlords, and banks in a manner that will address the barriers to investment in affordable housing.

We have held focus groups and market surveys across the industry. The findings from these have informed the design of our MVP. Upon the launch of our MVP, we will continue to engage with the users to better assess the impact it has on them relative to our intended impact. We will work with them and consult with our advisors to modify our solution, where necessary to achieve our desired outcomes. 

Our solution is in development. We expect that it would serve 50,000 households in one year and 3,000,000 households in five years. 

Our goal within the next year is to create 10,000 jobs and 500,000 jobs within the next five years. We also plan to provide affordable housing and access to credit to 50,000 households within the next year and to 3,000,000 households within the next five years. 

The barriers that may limit our impact in the foreseeable future include a shortage of funds, competition for application developers, regulatory hurdles, data security, and reluctance to adopt software to replace personal relationships.  

Our team will require funds to pay for employees, contractors, subscriptions, and business development. While the founders are financing the team at this time, the funds they have provided will run out before we are cash flow positive. 

Great applications require great application developers and the demand for the best developers exceeds their supply. We will need to attract teams of developers and retain them in order to deliver a sustainable application. 

Our application needs to integrate with databases of banks, credit agencies, and government agencies. We will need to obtain regulatory approvals and comply with data protection regulations before we can do this. We will also need to maintain the highest levels of security and encryption to protect transactions on the platform. 

Many people prefer the comfort of human to human interaction when dealing with their agents, bankers, customers, tenants, and landlords. The plan to transfer these interactions into an application will require persuasion and appeasement.

Our plans to overcome foreseeable barriers are as follows: 

Shortage of funds: Founders will keep contributing funds and the team will seek grants and financial support from accelerator programs. Once the MVP is launched, we will seek investments from angel investors and venture capital firms. 

Recruiting and retaining developers - Founders will consult with advisors to determine suitable employee stock grants or option plans that will be attractive to good developers. These may be awarded in conjunction with investments from an angel investor or venture capital firm.  

Regulatory compliance - We will consult with our advisors and lawyers to determine compliance requirements for each territory and establish processes and procedures that will ensure compliance. This will include recruiting a compliance team that will match the expectations of the regulators. 

Data security - We will engage data security firms with competences in all aspects of data security that we require. We will ensure that their services are updated on a daily basis, in line with developments in the data security industry. We will secure the best tools from leading data security firms.

Growth - We will implement a growth strategy that will include recruiting board members that will lead engagement with relevant stakeholders, such as banks, credit agencies, government agencies, and regulators, across the globe. We will also measure usage of the application and issue revisions based on how it is being used. We will advertise strategically and seek endorsements that will encourage increased adoption and usage. 

Our team includes the two founders working part-time on business development, stakeholder engagement and strategy; Temitope Borishade and Jude Oketta. Founders will become full time upon launching the application or receiving outside funding.

We have a project manager, who works full time on the application development and integration. He also supervises the contractors working on the application development. 

We have four contractors working on front-end and back-end development of the web and mobile versions of the application, as well as, on the UI/UX and application database. Some of the contractors will be employed full-time, as needed.

Temitope's prior experience includes working as an executive at a regional power utility in Nigeria and as a corporate finance manager in a Nigerian conglomerate. He is a director at a microfinance bank. He has worked as an investment banker in Nigeria and as a CPA in the US. He receiving a degree in Accounting from Obafemi Awolowo University and an MBA from DePaul University. He is a Chartered Accountant and a Chartered Stockbroker. He has participated in courses at London Business School, Harvard Business School and Wharton School.

Jude Oketta possesses over fifteen years' experience in systems analysis and design, as well as, application development and enterprise solutions. He holds a degree in Civil Engineering from Federal University of Technology and an MBA from Business School Netherlands. He is a member of the Computer Professionals of Nigeria, and the Project Management Institute. 

Temitope's experience at the power utility where he succeeded in adopting technology to bill and collect payments from banked customers, as well as, his experience and network in the banking industry and corporate Nigeria are valuable to the project. 

Jude is the founder of a leading information technology consultancy in Abuja, which specializes in software development, enterprise systems and data management. His skills, experience and network are valuable to the project. 

Temitope and Jude have both lived in Nigeria for decades and they have direct experience in the housing industry in Nigeria. They have also worked together in past projects when Temitope hired Jude's consultancy. 

For concept review and product development road map, we partnered with a team from Ventures Platform; an accelerator program for technology startups in Abuja. The team is guiding us as we develop our MVP. 

For market research, we partnered with CrowdForce ; a data analytics platform that empowers decision makers with real time, actionable intelligence gotten directly from real individuals in communities. 

For application development, we have subscribed to developer tools at Google, Atlassian, Heroku and Sendgrid.

Upon completion of our MVP, we will partner with financial institutions, credit rating agencies and government agencies. We have started integrating with Paystack Payments Limited to verify bank details provided by users.

We will collaborate with financial institutions to transfer payments across landlords, agents and tenants, and also to validate banking information provided by parties. 

We will collaborate with credit rating agencies to share information on credit habits of individuals and make their ratings on prospective tenants available to landlords, banks and mortgage providers.

We will partner with government agencies such as the Federal Road Safety Corps and Nigerian Identity Management Commission to validate identification information provided by agents, landlords and tenants, in order to prevent fraud and impersonation.

The Truelandlord application will provide a platform to landlords, agents, tenants, and banks to help them achieve their objectives. Landlords will get more transparency and be encouraged to invest in more affordable housing. Agents will be able to better connect with landlords and agents, market their services, and employ artificial intelligence in their daily operations. The application will also provide banks, which are reluctant to grant mortgages or consumer loans to households, the tools to extend such credits profitably.  

The application will offer free and paid subscriptions to users, and it would also sell advertising services to suitable partners when it is appropriate to do so.

Tenants need the application to avoid being defrauded by unscrupulous agents. It will enable them to avoid paying rent for 12 or 24 months in advance by using the micro-standby letter of credit tool. It will also enable them to see former tenant reviews on properties they seek to rent.  

Landlords need the application to perform proper due diligence on their tenants and agents. They can see past reviews on agents and access the credit reports on prospective tenants. They will also have clear oversight of dealings between their agents and tenants.  

Agents need the application to manage their back-office; matching client requests, managing tenancy agreement updates, record keeping, and reporting. They will also need it for their front office; business development, customer service, and sales. Agents will also use the application's rent bidding tool to better set rents and avoid vacancies.

We plan for our founders to contribute capital to fund concept development, market research, and application development. We would also like to receive grants and donations from accelerator programs and other sponsors until we find a venture capital firm or angel investor that can invest in our business. 

Subject to the recommendations of our advisors and early investors, we would like to raise investment capital from private equity firms until we start generating revenues from our users and clients through subscriptions and adverts. We will maintain a low-cost structure and establish strong networks within our target community so that we can quickly raise our revenues above our costs. 

We will work to become an intermediary that facilitates relationships between banks, landlords, agents, and tenants while providing services such as credit checks, transaction support, marketing, and artificial intelligence. We will be able to have multiple impacts by playing this role, including lowering the cost of housing, increasing employment, improving access to credit, and raising the standard of living of our target community.

We are applying to Solve because we want to leverage MIT's innovation ecosystem in delivering our solution. We are also applying because of the financial support and guidance that is on offer. Solve will connect us with good partners, mentors, and technologies that will help accelerate our work, validate our impact and business model, and scale our solution.

The barriers to our solution include funding limitations, recruiting developers, application security,  regulatory hurdles, and user acquisition. 

Solve can help us secure the funding we need. The community can also guide us to secure developers and data security partnerships. The community will also connect us with mentors that can help us navigate global regulatory hurdles and advise us on how to scale our solution across the world.

A good board member or advisor can guide our team on legal or regulatory matters, business and revenue model, solution technology and talent recruitment. We are also open to partnering with organizations that can support our efforts in each of these areas. 

At this stage, we would like to partner with organizations that can help us to deliver a user-friendly and secure application that delivers features that address the pain points of our users. These will include developers, data security firms, incubators and start-up consultants. 

As we complete and launch our MVP, we will identify more partners within the Solve community. 

Our solution will benefit women by creating jobs opportunities in real estate and providing them with tools to be competitive real estate agents.

Our solution also aims to provide affordable housing for all. This will benefit women and girls, as much as, it will benefit men and boys. 

Our solution provides tools for working age adults that find themselves unemployed or underemployed to become competitive real estate agents. Our solution introduces them to a network of potential clients by presenting their reviews on their services across the platform and providing an independent tracking of their performance. 

Our solution also promotes investments and business opportunities in affordable housing for entrepreneurs and investors. 

Our solution will adopt data science and artificial intelligence to replicate relationships, interactions and services of banks, landlords, tenants and agents within our platform, based on business practices, preferences and behaviors of its users. 

We will use the AI for Humanity Prize to woo partners that can guide us in developing a solution that takes full advantage of the best AI tools. We will also spend the prize money on salaries, contractors, subscriptions, and business development expenses.