You will find a person rarely who is not aware of the problem of finding a suitable room or a flat living inside Kathmandu. As if that is possible. Good luck with that. People all over the country are pouring in day by day to Kathmandu, some for education but the majority of people come here to build a career.
It’s not a bigger problem for you to find a bride for yourself here as it is to rent a space for living. If you are lucky and have located a room for rent, then your next problem is expensive to rent. But you have no alternatives left, and you cannot even argue. You are eventually forced to pay the rent amount set by the owner even if the water comes like once a month or you have to buy drinking water or no parking space available, to name few. Nevertheless, you got your space, right? One day you then meet a friend who lives nearby, and while chitchatting, you found out that s/he is paying a lot less than what you are paying for the equivalent room.
So you see what’s the problem here? No platform where you can browse space for rent and compare the prices. Of course, you can call an agent who will find you home but he is an agent, not your caretaker plus he also takes commission from both owners and tenants. There are websites in other countries which help to communicate between the owner and the searcher for space. But not here, not until recently. Thank god Gharbheti came to your rescue. In this age of information, everybody should be able to access the information they require. While it’s hard for a person to find a room for rent, some spaces, on the other hand, go unrelated for a longer time, thereby incurring a financial loss for landlords. Gharbheti simply tries to solve this by acting as a bridge between the tenants and landlords’, says the founder, Rajan Dahal. This might solve your entire problem. So now you can rent rooms or flats you like and don’t worry about paying a lot for the same flat while others are paying much less because the rental price is listed directly on the website for everyone to see and hence compare.
So via this website, people can have that power of information at the tips of their fingers, hence saving lots of money.
The name as he said was chosen to give it a Nepali like the ring so that it might sound familiar to the native people. Clever huh? Gharbheti was developed by Softech Foundation, and it was officially launched on August 1, 2017. Ghar Beti can be found on the website as well as used as an application, whichever suits the user. Ghar Beti has a very user-friendly user interface. So anyone should be able to use it. First, a user must register if s/he does not have time to browse all the time. While registering the user must enter the location, types of spaces, and price range of spaces required. Afters/he completes recording, the user will be notified once the area with all the stated requirements becomes available.
On the other hand if your free time, then you can browse all the available room, flats for office or home on your mobile or laptop screen. The rental costs are also listed. How easy is that?
According to Rajan, more than 200 people have already found suitable rental homes for them, thanks to Gharbheti. Within just two months of operation of the website; Gharbheti has received excellent reviews on its Facebook page.
The website is visited by an average of 1000 unique users per day and no doubt the number is increasing day by day. This site does not only help tenants but landlords or owners as well. How can they use it? The process is the same. They need to register with all the details and list the cost of rent of the room, house, flat or apartment they want to lease.
And in no time Gharbheti will notify them of the suitable tenants. Now they don’t need to worry about their place remaining empty for a long time or pay an agent hence saving time and money. But there is a problem though as faced by the founder. Even though the number of tenants or say searchers is increasing day by day, the case is different in case of landlords.
“They are still unsure about the platform. When we approach them to list their properties for rent on the portal, they think it’s unnecessary as a tenant will turn up eventually. Thus, no use of coming to the platform,” Dahal added.
This should come as no surprise as the number of searchers for space exceeds the number of owners searching for tenants by a considerable amount. This is a challenge for Gharbheti.com.
It does not mean they are not trying. Ghar Bheti team has agents in several places inside the valley who are collecting data on to-let spaces and hence creating a comprehensive database on available rental spaces. Soon they will share this valuable information.
Moreover, the Gharbheti team has several plans too. One being, “We plan to make rooms available for people who arrive from all nooks and corners of Nepal for a short period like health treatments or taking exams or the most common reason: making a passport. The only option for them as of now is to stay in hotels, which by the way is very expensive. We want to help them as well,” adds Dahal. This is not a new concept, but it’s late in the context of Nepal, but the chances are likely that it will succeed. Don’t worry team, there are many tenants still searching, and the number is never going to decrease.