About Openroom
Cheers to a transparent and connected rental ecosystem!
I'm the Co-Founder and CEO at Openroom
No one wants to be in a dispute. It is extremely painful & stressful. My tenancy dispute led us to create Openroom.I wanted to grow my family and move into my home
I issued the notices, paid compensation, and gave more than 2X the amount of time for my tenants to find a new home. Tenants decided they weren’t going to leave and they weren’t going to pay rent anymore.$35K in rental arrears and 7 LTB orders later
I was 30 weeks pregnant, I went to the Tribunal Hearings and finally got the order to evict. It was a near 2 year dispute that was mentally exhausting.Built Openroom to hold people accountable
I found out I was not the only one. Thousands of people were going through disputes - be it tenants or landlords. I wondered why these orders were not made public in a timely manner because Canada has the Open Court Principle. With that, I shared my 7 court orders with you.Over 100K visitors and 2 million searches
The Openroom community members, like you, helped us build a Court Order Search Engine that has changed the rental industry. All of us created this movement towards transparency in the rental ecosystem.Continuing this epic movement
I ended up leaving my corporate job to continue educating, sharing, and building for the Canadian rental ecosystem. My team and I believe in a world where great renters and great housing providers can thrive together.
Our Story
Openroom Co-Founders
Openroom
Co-Founders
Weiting Bollu
CEO & Co-Founder
Vishal Bollu
CTO & Co-Founder
Dear Openroom Community
As Founders of openroom.ca, we want to take a moment to express our heartfelt appreciation for your passionate support and involvement.
In September 2022, we created a small passion project that was motivated from our own tenancy dispute. Over the course of the last year, the community has responded to our project with curiosity and engagement. This is not to be taken for granted because many projects don’t end up getting the attention they deserve. Thank you for your continued involvement and active participation.
As we maintained the website and got feedback from you, we have begun to understand the depth of the rental ecosystem. Our interactions with you, the community, has taught us about the current state of affairs and pain points from many different perspectives. While there is a lot more to still learn, your feedback helped us understand the key points that Openroom is now rallying around.
Our vision is that one day, there will be a transparent and connected rental ecosystem that appropriately incentivizes responsible members.
Our operating principles will always remain true as we continue our work to achieve this vision.
1. Landlords are business owners. Being a landlord is not hands-free passive income. Landlords are providing a service of housing in exchange for money. The tenants are customers. Landlords should make every attempt to provide the best service: a well maintained rental unit that is safe and legal to inhabit. Landlords should be aware of and comply with rental policies and regulations of their place of business.
2. Tenants are responsible customers. Tenants are aware of the policies and regulations and should be empowered to advocate for their rights. Tenants are responsible customers who will pay for services rendered in a timely fashion, maintain the rental unit in good condition, and respect what is stipulated within the signed rental agreement.
With the two key points above, we want to create an ecosystem that incentivizes the millions of Landlords and Tenants to engage in the business of tenancy as responsible members of the rental ecosystem.
There is a lot of opportunity to save time, money, and mental calories. We can make massive improvements together.
-Openroom Co-Founders
hello@openroom.ca
RE: May 2023 Letter to the Public
Our Advisors and Partners
We are building alongside a group of subject matter experts across Canada.
In the Openroom community, we are lawyers, paralegals, non-profit board members, corporate executives, private investigators, credit bureaus, government officials, renters, property managers, data scientists, and housing providers.
Connect with us
Openroom is built by Canadians, in Canada. We know our amibitious goal of a transparent and connected rental ecosystem needs brilliant minds. We are always on the look out for team members and/or advisors who believe in a better future for great renters and great housing providers.
Interested in joining us? Learn more →
Appreciate what we do? You can buy us a $3.00 coffee →
Want to be on our wall of love? Send us a warn & fuzzy compliment! →
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Step 1: Obtain order from the court.
After your hearing with the court in your Province or Territory, you will receive an official written order in the form of a virtual PDF or a physical piece of mail indicating the ruling between yourself and the other party / parties involved.
Step 2: Upload to Openroom.
The court order can be sent to Openroom through our Submit a Court Order page. You must send the original PDF attached in the email the court has sent. It must NOT be modified.
Step 3: Wait for Openroom team to review and approve
After submission, our back office team will review the information within 48 hours. Once successful, the PDF document will be published to Openroom and become searchable by all who visit Openroom.ca.
What are applications?
Applications are documentation which parties in a dispute would file with the LTB and await a hearing for. These are not the Tribunal Decisions that are issued once a hearing is held. These are pre-LTB hearing documents.
Notices Issued (never accepted) → Application Filings (Openroom no longer accepts) → Court Order (always accepted)
Openroom is doubling down on our efforts surrounding all tenancy related court orders from across the nation and all levels of our legal system, without the distraction of applications as it has not added fundamental value to our community to build towards a transparent and connected rental ecosystem future.
We want to be transparent and to share our decision making process with you. You are building Openroom with us and you need to know why we made this decision.
• At the time of writing this, we have roughly 15,000 aggregated court orders inside the Openroom system. Applications resulted in less than 2% or ~300 of the submissions from our community. That's tiny!
• We've been reading your feedback and you've expressed concerns about publicizing applications without a hearing. We hear you!
What will happen with applications in the database today? All previously submitted applications have been removed.
As always, thank you for your continued support in building Openroom with us.