Let’s not normalize paying for apartment tours? 

Apartment hunting is already kind of a miserable experience — renters are faced with low inventory, stiff competition, everclimbing rates, and the time-consuming task of running around, often unsuccessfully, for tours. 

Now, to make matters worse, you might have to start paying just to look. 

Rently, a leasing automation startup pushing “self-guided touring,” recently started charging renters for apartment tours, per Futurism. 

How it works

Apartment hunters can search for listings on Rently’s website and its partner sites, and tour them on their own time by entering a one-time code into a smart lock or lockbox. 

A viral post on X (relatably captioned: “I’m not paying $5 to tour a potential rental home, you ppl have lost your mind”) shows a screenshot of Rently’s two payment options:

• The first, labeled “Casually Looking,” offers access to 10 tours over 30 days for $4.99. 
• The second, called “Rent Ready,” offers unlimited tours over 30 days for $11.99, plus benefits like instant credit pre-check, 24/7 support, and whatever “Verified Renter Status” gives you. 

The price points aren’t terrible, if you prefer the convenience and flexibility of a self-guided tour — Rently says 40%+ of its self-guided tours happen outside of leasing office hours. 

Then again, you could be paying zero dollars. 

Happy for landlords, sad for us

Renters, who represent 36% of US households, are the obvious losers here. But the platform is a win for landlords: The company says it generates 25% more touring traffic and reportedly reduces the average time a listing is on the market by 75%. 

It also offers AI-powered leasing automation for processes like ID verification, inquiry responses, and financial screening, saving landlords even more time to do things like, we presume, raise rent rates. 

The biggest winner, though, is middleman Rently. Amid a hot rental market, it’s commodified the rental application process, creating a brand-new revenue stream out of what was once free access to information — and while we aren’t necessarily rooting for them, it’s exactly “the kind of money move,” Futurism says, “our economy is built on.”