What is Yurento, and How does it work?

Finding new tenants is a critical step in property management, often associated with significant costs and effort. Traditionally, property owners might rely on real estate agents or brokers who primarily handle tenant acquisition. While effective for finding tenants, these agents can charge a substantial price for this specific service ranging from 40-80% share of the first rental payment. This is a considerable expense for property owners.

Yurento offers a significantly more cost-effective and streamlined approach as part of its unified property management system. When a property or unit is managed on the Yurento platform and becomes vacant, it is automatically listed on our dedicated listing page. This page functions similarly to well-known listing platforms like Zillow in the US, serving as a central hub for potential tenants to discover available properties. Crucially, this tenant acquisition feature through our rental listings is included as part of Yurento's overall service, which is priced significantly lower, typically ranging from just 2-5% of the monthly rent. This presents a powerful cost saving compared to paying a separate agent 40-70% of the first month's rent just for tenant finding.

The listings on listing page are designed to be comprehensive and appealing to prospective tenants, providing information to help them make informed decisions . Each listing includes property images, unit images, a comprehensive description detailing the location (including geo coordinates), property and unit features such as the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, a description of other associated amenities, and the rental price along with the billing sequence. To enhance the user experience and aid in finding the right property, the listing page incorporates semantic search capabilities, making it easier for users to convert from prospects to tenants.

Beyond our dedicated listing page, we further amplify visibility by automatically advertising these vacant units on platforms like Facebook Marketplace and other social platforms directly from our system. While some other digital property management platforms may offer features for advertising vacant units, Yurento's key differentiation lies in this seamless, automatic integration of a public listing service directly into the core property management platform, specifically designed to streamline the entire process "from acquiring tenant through our rental listings" to ongoing management.

By providing this integrated tenant acquisition tool within our comprehensive management system, Yurento significantly reduces the hassle and cost traditionally associated with filling vacancies, offering an efficient way to manage properties from acquisition through to rent collection and utility management.

Rent payment and collection are critical processes for both tenants and landlords. At Yurento, we prioritize making this process highly efficient, transparent, and reliable. We automate rent collection by providing each tenant with a secure, personalized online portal. Through this portal, tenants can easily track their rent balance, view payment due dates, manage bills, and access important notifications instantly – often before they are sent via SMS or Email.
Our seamless M-Pesa integration utilizes STK Push (M-Pesa prompt), allowing tenants to pay rent quickly and securely by simply entering their M-Pesa number and PIN. Upon successful payment, both the tenant's ledger and the property owner's account balance are updated automatically in real-time within Yurento. Every transaction is meticulously recorded and reconciled with M-Pesa statements, ensuring complete financial transparency for all parties involved – tenants, landlords, and Yurento.
Addressing the crucial need for trust and timely access to funds, Yurento offers real-time bank transfers. As soon as rent is received and cleared in our system, funds are transferred directly to the property owner's designated bank account, ensuring same-day access to collected rent.

To further enhance rent collection rates and reduce defaults, we offer the 'Lipa Mdogo Mdogo' (Pay Bit by Bit) feature. This allows tenants the flexibility to make smaller, incremental payments towards their rent before or even shortly after the official due date. This approach, similar to common savings practices like daily contribution groups (chamas), alleviates the financial pressure of a single lump-sum payment at the end of the month. By offering this flexibility, landlords will improve tenant retention (LTV) and overall tenant satisfaction. 

Streamlining more than just rent, Yurento features robust utility management to simplify billing for diverse property-related charges. Landlords can easily configure unit-specific pricing for variable utilities (like water and electricity) and fixed monthly services (like garbage or security). Yurento then efficiently combines these with rent into one consolidated tenant bill. The system further automates the process by sending SMS reminders for meter readings to managers/caretakers; upon entry, it finalizes calculations and automatically invoices tenants via SMS/email. Crucially, Yurento maintains a secure digital archive of all historical utility data, ensuring billing accuracy, deterring fraud, and eliminating the need for extensive paper records. This comprehensive automation of utility calculation, invoicing, and record-keeping significantly boosts efficiency, making property management less hassle for owners in Kenya."