What's new on Rentor

The bottom bar now carries the job you came to do, not just the places to browse.

Providers: a Work tab

Adding a product or service used to sit three taps deep under More. Work is now a tab of its own, with Add a service or product at the top, then your catalogue, your bookings, your advert profile and areas, and how you get paid. The old Jobs tab is now Home, with the same jobs list and a row of one-tap jumps above it.

Hosts: a Stays tab

Your stays, reservations, sublets, finding a place to host, lease bills and getting paid, all in one place. Sublets keep their own screen; it is one tap inside Stays.

Landlords and agencies: a Tenants tab

The roster, who has paid, arrears and invites are now on the bar. Maintenance moved from the bar to a row on Properties and to "Needs attention" on Home, where open repairs already appeared.

Every Home starts with what to do

Each role's Home now opens with a row of one-tap jumps, its add action first, so a new account can see where to begin without opening a menu.

Two fixes for the iPhone app, and the app can now tell us when something goes wrong.

Adding a place you work no longer goes dark

A service provider adding a place they work could tap a result and get a black screen that took no touches until the app was closed. The same thing could happen from the place filter on the marketplace. Both are fixed; the places you had already added were never lost.

Buttons on a provider's card read properly

Message, Call, WhatsApp and Assign job sat four across and the words broke in half. They now sit two per row at full width.

The app reports its own crashes

When something breaks on your phone, the app now sends us the error and which version it happened on, so it can be fixed without you having to write in. It sends no personal details — not your name, number or email — only the fault itself and an internal account reference so support can find a report you ask about.

The pages you shop on can finally be shopped from, and a stay can be paid by card.

Save what you are looking at

The heart is now on marketplace cards, on Stays cards and on a listing. Tap it signed out and you are brought back to finish the save after signing in, rather than losing what you were doing.

Stays: card, bank, and a map

Stays took M-Pesa or cash. Card and bank now appear too, but only for a host who has actually set them up, and the card fee is named before you are handed to the payment page. There is also a map, because choosing where to sleep is a question about where.

A provider's page shows the work

Their price list, their recent work, how many reviews stand behind the score, and the year they joined Rentor - all of it was in the app's answer already and none of it was on the screen.

Hostels and enquiries

A hostel with every bed taken now offers its waiting list instead of a dead end, and a listing can start a WhatsApp enquiry that reaches the people who answer them.

Notifications reach your phone, the front page is four doors, and a tenant opens like a card.

Push notifications on Android

The Android app can now register for push notifications - rent reminders, receipts, maintenance updates and messages arrive on the phone the moment they happen. Open Notifications in the app and tap Turn on. If it cannot be turned on, the app now says why instead of going quiet.

The front page

The homepage opens on what Rentor does - Find a home, Search for a stay, Find a service provider and Manage your property - with the place search right under them and nothing in front of them.

Tenants, one tap away

For landlords and agencies the Tenants page is a list: photo, name and unit. Tap a tenant and everything about them opens in one panel - lease, property, inspection, billing, payment history, notice - on the web and in the app.

Rentor is simpler to find your way around - on the web and in the app.

Start with what you came to do

The front page now opens on three doors - Find a home, Search for a stay, Find a service provider - with a location search right under them. No pitch to scroll past. Service providers are public: anyone can browse vetted fundis, cleaners and movers, and sign in only when they want to book.

A home for every account

• Brand-new accounts land on a real home page with a search, your recently

viewed places, your saved searches and a clear next step - no more being bounced to the listings.

• Sign-up asks what brings you here and sets you up for it.
• Fresh landlord, host and provider dashboards show what to do first and

a real example, instead of a grid of zeros.

Get told when something new matches

Save a search and switch on alerts: new homes or stays that match arrive by email or push, daily or weekly, with a one-tap way to switch off. Manage them from Saved on the web or in the app.

Find anything in two taps

• Web: press Ctrl/Cmd + K to jump to any page, or search the help

articles from the same box. Dashboards are regrouped into a handful of clear sections.

• App: the More tab is now searchable and grouped the same way as the

web; members get a Saved tab and providers a Schedule tab.

Feels quicker

Screens load with placeholders instead of spinners, dialogs and sheets animate, and everything respects your reduce-motion setting. The app gets a new store release with drag-to-dismiss sheets and smoother picture handoffs from a listing to its details.

Getting help on Rentor just got a lot easier — and a lot more human.

A Help button on every page

Look for the ? beside the notification bell. It searches everything Rentor knows in one box: the guides, the FAQs, the tutorials, and the pages themselves. Most questions are really "where is that?", so searching "add a tenant" now gives you the actual page alongside the guide.

It understands the words people actually use — fundi, paybill, bedsitter, watchman — and it forgives spelling. Results are tuned to the role you are wearing.

Support tickets

When the guides do not answer it, the same panel opens a support ticket. You get a reference number, a named person, and a thread you can follow to an answer — not an email into the dark.

• Attach screenshots or PDFs as evidence. They are encrypted.
• Response times are measured in working hours, so a ticket raised on Friday

evening is not late on Saturday morning.

• Anything about money that has moved, an account nobody can get into, or your

personal data is treated as high priority automatically.

• If a resolved ticket turns out not to be resolved, just reply — it reopens.

You never need to raise a second ticket for the same problem.

• Locked out? You can still raise a ticket. That is exactly when you need one.

A guided tour, if you want one

New accounts get a short walkthrough of their own dashboard — five stops, and you can skip it. There is a getting-started checklist on your home page that ticks itself off as you actually do things, and it retires itself when you are done. Turn tips off (or back on) under Account.

Also in this release

• Six new help guides, including cash payments, refunds, join requests and

notification settings — and every existing guide now carries a plain-English summary.

• The FAQ set has more than doubled.
• We will never ask for your password, M-Pesa PIN or an OTP. Not on a

ticket, not on a call, not on WhatsApp.

Rentor is out of beta. Version 1.0 is the first public production release — the same platform on the web, on Android and on iPhone, with one account carrying every role you hold.

Find a home

Search verified rentals across Kenya by county, estate, budget, bedrooms and amenities, from bedsitters to maisonettes. Property pages show the real photos, the real rent, and what the landlord actually covers. Units in the same block are grouped together, so you compare a building once rather than the same address eight times.

• Discover is a video feed of listings — swipe through walkthroughs instead of scrolling thumbnails.
• Save a search and hear about new homes that match it; favourite anything you want to come back to.
• Book a viewing online and pick a slot from the hours the landlord actually keeps. No phone tag, and your number stays private.

Renting, and rent

Once you move in you get a dashboard that answers the only question that matters: am I paid up?

• A rent ledger month by month, showing what was due, what you paid, and what is outstanding. Overpayments carry forward instead of disappearing.
• Automatic receipts. Every confirmed payment is numbered and receipted the moment it lands, and downloadable as a PDF.
• Reminders before rent is due, so a due date does not arrive as a surprise.
• Leases you sign on the platform, and a move-in checklist you and your landlord agree on together.
• Notice periods that end a tenancy properly, with the final ledger settled rather than abandoned.

Ways to pay

Money goes straight to the person you are paying. Rentor records it and receipts it. Rentor never holds it, and never takes a cut of your rent.

• M-Pesa — confirm your number, approve the prompt on your handset, done in seconds. The app waits with you and ends on a verdict instead of leaving you guessing.
• Card and bank transfer, through a secure hosted checkout, wherever the recipient has set them up.
• Cash and deposits you made offline can be recorded too. You claim it, the recipient confirms it, and only then does it post — a claim is never a payment on its own.

If a payment comes back looking wrong, it is held for review rather than posted to the wrong place, and you are told once it is resolved.

Deposits and refunds

Your security deposit is tracked as a deposit, not as rent. When a tenancy ends it becomes a refund obligation for the full amount, and every deduction has to be itemised against it inside a 14-day window. You can see each deduction and what it was for. A landlord's public profile shows how they have handled refunds before — how many, and how long they took.

Maintenance and utilities

Report a problem with photos and follow it through to fixed. Landlords and agencies see every open job across the portfolio, including common-area work that belongs to no single unit. Where water and electricity are metered, readings are taken each month and the bill is worked out from the reading — you can see the previous reading, the current one, and the rate you were charged.

Student housing

Bed spaces in hostels are listed properly for the first time. Search by campus, book a bed rather than a whole unit, and be billed by term or semester instead of being asked to pretend a four-month semester is four separate months.

Rentor Stays

Furnished homes by the night, with their own calendar, instant or request-to-book, and double-blind reviews — you and your host each only see the other's review once both are in. Hosts keep 100% of what guests pay.

Services

Book vetted plumbers, electricians, cleaners, movers and other fundis from inside the platform. Providers publish their prices and the areas they cover, take bookings against their real availability, invoice through the platform, and build a public reputation out of rated work. Photographers and videographers can be booked for property shoots.

For landlords, agencies, caretakers and hosts

• Landlords get occupancy, rent collected against rent expected, arrears and maintenance in one place, and collect into their own M-Pesa or bank account.
• Agencies manage properties for client landlords, with staff accounts whose permissions each landlord controls. Money and credentials stay with the owner.
• Caretakers are invited to specific buildings to record meter readings and report maintenance. They never see or handle money.
• Hosts can be handed units to let out nightly or sublet long-term, and pay their own lease bills through the same rails.

Bringing an existing portfolio over? The import wizard takes your spreadsheet, shows you exactly what it will create, and only commits when you say so.

Verification and trust

Accounts and properties are verified document by document, by a person. Verified landlords and verified listings are badged, service providers must pass KYC before they can be published, and tenants build a trust score out of a payment record that is genuinely theirs. Ratings run both ways — tenants rate landlords too.

Your documents, your data

Leases, IDs and certificates are encrypted at rest, kept only as long as they are needed, and never shown to the other side of a deal. Your phone number and email are never exposed to another user: viewings, messages and notices all travel through the platform, in line with Kenya's Data Protection Act. You can export your data, or ask for your account to be deleted, from your own settings.

Reports and tax

Export income, expenses, arrears and occupancy as CSV or PDF for any period you choose. On eligible plans, file rental income with KRA under your own PIN, using the records already on the platform.

In your pocket

The Android and iPhone apps are live. Explore the marketplace, browse Stays, pay rent with an M-Pesa prompt, report maintenance, and get told when something needs you. Sign in with a code sent to your phone, and the app locks rather than logging you out when you put it down.

Karibu. This is version one — tell us what to build next.