It’s a novel approach.

As the number of properties available to rent in Ireland hit an all-time low, a Cork entrepreneur has come up with a new way to help connect tenants with prospective landlords and letting agents.

HomeHak was developed by Pat Drinan, a Cork native who has experienced the rental market from both sides, as a tenant and a landlord.

The website allows home seekers to create and display their details in the form of a Tenant CV, “to be found and selected by landlords and letting agents in search of reliable, trustworthy people to rent properties”.

The website has built-in technology to aid this process, such as ID verification from Stripe Identity (a first in the Irish renting sector) and a streamlined online reference collection system.

Landlords, homeowners, and letting agents can advertise their properties for free on HomeHak. After a free trial, home seekers pay a small membership fee to communicate on the site.

Having launched in late 2021 in Cork, the company has thousands of tenants signed up and has already finalised partnerships with some of the leading letting agencies in the country, including Sherry Fitzgerald Lettings in Cork, DNG Creedon, Trading Places, and Prime Lettings and Management.

Pat, who spent several years working in the finance industry in Ireland and internationally, created HomeHak after identifying a lot of unnecessary red tape and costs for all stakeholders in the current property-based advertising model.

“A home-seeker can use their impressive HomeHak Tenant CV to stand out from the crowd and get selected anywhere in the world,” he said.

“In the current property-based website model, hundreds of hopeful home-seekers apply for a single property, only for the majority to be left disappointed. A model such as HomeHak where organised applicants get selected is much more efficient and personal.”

Rent a room on the QT

HomeHak is also aimed at homeowners who might like to benefit from tax-free earnings by renting their spare rooms for medium to long term but are not comfortable with advertising their home publicly on existing property websites. Instead, they can discreetly enter their property address on HomeHak and assess Tenant CVs one by one before contacting the ideal applicants.

Another popular feature is the ability for home-seekers with similar needs or interests to form ready-made households. Groups such as students in the same course, people in the same profession, or those who work in the same area, can join their Tenant CVs and present as co-applicants for a property.

Pat and the team at HomeHak have a number of products on the horizon, including one to support employers and universities who want to help their staff or students to find homes to rent.