A San Francisco startup will allow landlords to auction long-term rental leases to competing bidders online.

Rentberry, an online auction platform for long-term rental leases, is launching tomorrow in the Bay Area and New York.
CEO Alex Lubinsky says apartment-hunting is already a bidding war; Rentberry simply provides a more transparent and convenient negotiation process, while eliminating most application fees.
Prospective tenants will be able to see the highest offer and how many people are bidding, and to make multiple counteroffers until the listing expires.
Landlords can expect their rental incomes to increase by 5 percent on average, the company estimates. They'll also get the service for free.
So will tenants—until or unless they end up signing a rental agreement, at which point they'll pay $25. Soon, Rentberry will begin charging them monthly payments of one quarter of the additional income gained by their landlords.
Of course, not everyone agrees that this is "renting done right" (the company's tagline). "Some will say the last thing the San Francisco rental market needs is a middleman taking his slice when ordinary people are being priced out every day," notes SFGate.
To that concern, Lubinsky responds: "We aren’t living in North Korea… Here we have supply and demand, and we have freedom of choice."
Rentberry also plans to expand to slower markets like Dallas and Houston, where it expects landlords to accept low-ball offers in order to fill vacancies faster.
FULL STORY: SF startup lets would-be tenants bid for apartments

Rethinking Redlining
For decades we have blamed 100-year-old maps for the patterns of spatial racial inequity that persist in American cities today. An esteemed researcher says: we’ve got it all wrong.

Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.

California High-Speed Rail's Plan to Right Itself
The railroad's new CEO thinks he can get the project back on track. The stars will need to align this summer.

Santa Clara County Dedicates Over $28M to Affordable Housing
The county is funding over 600 new affordable housing units via revenue from a 2016 bond measure.

Why a Failed ‘Smart City’ Is Still Relevant
A Google-backed proposal to turn an underused section of Toronto waterfront into a tech hub holds relevant lessons about privacy and data.

When Sears Pioneered Modular Housing
Kit homes sold in catalogs like Sears and Montgomery Ward made homeownership affordable for midcentury Americans.
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
City of Camden Redevelopment Agency
City of Astoria
Transportation Research & Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University
Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada
Toledo-Lucas County Plan Commissions