RentCreeb
Proptech · Consumer Trust + Savings Web/Mobile App
Designing the end-to-end rental experience for a Nigerian proptech marketplace, from property discovery and identity verification to rent savings and inspection booking.
Proptech / Consumer
Industry
Web App
Platform
Project Overview
RentCreeb is a proptech marketplace connecting renters and buyers with verified properties across Nigeria. The product covers the full rental journey, searching and discovering listings, verifying identity, saving toward rent, booking property inspections, and managing tenancy after moving in. I led the product design end-to-end, from near-empty canvas to a live, functioning platform, designing the flows that help users find a home they can trust, pay for it safely, and settle in without the friction that defines most rental experiences in the Nigerian market.
The Challenge
Renting in Nigeria carries a specific kind of anxiety. Scam listings are common. Agents ask for fees before you've seen the property. Payments are made in cash, with no paper trail and no recourse if something goes wrong. And once you've found a place you like, the inspection process is informal, unstructured, and entirely dependent on the agent's schedule. For RentCreeb to work as a marketplace, it had to solve more than discovery. It had to make the whole process feel safe, for users who've been burned before and are rightfully skeptical of any new platform claiming to fix a broken market. And it had to keep transactions on-platform: if users moved to WhatsApp after being matched, the platform's value and revenue would leak out with every deal that closed outside the system.
"You don't solve off-platform leakage by restricting users. You solve it by making the platform worth staying on."
My Role & Approach
What I owned
I led the design of RentCreeb end-to-end, which on a marketplace of this scope meant designing across multiple distinct user journeys. A tenant searching for a first apartment has completely different needs from a tenant tracking a maintenance request six months into their lease. I owned both ends of that spectrum and everything in between.
How I approached it
I mapped the full rental lifecycle first; discovery, verification, savings, inspection, tenancy, and designed each stage as a coherent experience that feeds into the next. The goal was a platform where trust compounds: each successful interaction makes the next one feel safer, until handling any part of this outside the platform feels like the riskier option.
The central view for active tenants — managing rental status, savings progress, maintenance requests, and upcoming actions from one place.
RentSave — savings toward rent as a core product feature
The biggest barrier to renting in Nigeria isn't finding a property, it's having the cash upfront. Landlords typically require one to two years of rent paid in advance. RentSave is the feature I designed to address that directly: a structured savings product built into the platform. By helping users save toward rent within RentCreeb, the platform becomes part of the financial journey before the transaction, creating stickiness no notification strategy can manufacture.
Inspection booking as a structured, in-platform flow
Property inspections in Nigeria are usually a phone call to an agent and a time that gets changed twice. I designed Book Inspection as a four-step structured process: choose a date and time, review and confirm with payment details, complete OTP verification, receive a confirmed booking. The OTP step; showing both the tenant's phone number and the agent's name, was a deliberate trust decision. It creates mutual accountability before anyone shows up at a property.
Property detail designed to reduce scam anxiety
The property detail screen carries more weight on RentCreeb than on most marketplaces because the stakes of a wrong decision are so high. I designed it to front-load trust signals, verified badge, scam prevention banner, photo gallery, before pricing or CTAs. The What's Nearby companion view grounds the listing in real geographic context. A property that shows you a school, hospital, and market within 2km feels more real than one that doesn't. That specificity is what keeps users from seeking external validation before committing.
Controlled communication to keep transactions on-platform
Preventing users from moving to WhatsApp after being matched was a core marketplace challenge. Rather than blocking external contact entirely "which creates frustration" I designed a controlled in-app communication system that makes staying on-platform the path of least resistance. The interface surfaces what users need, keeps conversations contextualised to the property, and removes the friction that typically pushes people toward external channels.
Maintenance requests as a post-tenancy retention tool
Most proptech products become irrelevant the moment a lease is signed. I designed RentCreeb's maintenance request flow as a reason to stay engaged after move-in, a three-screen process where tenants log issues, add photos, and track resolution. This isn't just a convenience feature. It's what makes RentCreeb valuable to the tenant relationship after the transaction, which is what sustains a marketplace long-term rather than just driving one-time conversions.
Outcomes & Reflection
RentCreeb is live at rentcreeb.com with real listings, real users, and real transactions happening within the system. The directional improvements are meaningful, a verified identity layer that builds trust before interactions begin, a savings product that makes the platform relevant before the rental transaction, and an inspection flow that keeps the process structured from first interest to confirmed visit.
What this project reinforced for me is that in markets where trust is the scarce resource, every design decision is a trust decision. In the Nigerian rental market, users have been conditioned to expect friction, scams, and broken promises. Designing for that context isn't just about making things usable, it's about making things believable. One moment of uncertainty is enough to send a user to WhatsApp and close a deal outside your platform forever.
The most important thing I designed on RentCreeb wasn't a single screen. It was the logic that connects every stage of the rental journey, where each successful interaction builds enough trust to carry the user into the next one.
