CuseRents

Inspiration CuseRents was inspired by a simple real-life moment — while hosting a party, we realized no one in our house had a speaker big enough, and the one friend who did had already lent it out. That got us thinking — as students at Syracuse University, we often need tools or gadgets that cost hundreds of dollars but are only used once or twice. Instead of buying them, what if we could rent these daily-use items from nearby students? That idea sparked the creation of CuseRents — a platform built to make sharing resources easy, affordable, and sustainable.

What It Does

CuseRents is a micro-rental marketplace that allows users to rent, lend, and discover everyday items from their local community. Users can browse items by category or distance, list their own items for rent, make secure payments via Stripe, and manage their listings and rentals from a unified dashboard. It also tracks metrics like CO₂ saved and wallet rewards, encouraging sustainable sharing and community trust.

How We Built It

We built CuseRents using a Django REST Framework backend and a React (JavaScript + CSS) frontend. The backend handles authentication (via dj-rest-auth and allauth), payments (through Stripe API), and database operations. The frontend manages real-time item listings, booking flows, and user profiles using React Context API and Axios. We used SQLite for development and designed the system to scale to PostgreSQL in production.

Challenges We Ran Into

Integrating Stripe payments with refundable deposits Debugging CORS errors between Django and React Ensuring smooth state management across booking and user flows Designing a simple yet functional UI for listings and profiles Managing authentication tokens and secure session handling

Accomplishments That We’re Proud Of

Successfully built a fully functional full-stack rental platform in a short timeframe Integrated Stripe payments and deposits without breaking the booking flow Designed a clean, student-friendly UI/UX Implemented real-time updates for user profiles and rental history Created a platform that genuinely solves a real campus problem

What We Learned

How to integrate frontend and backend APIs seamlessly Hands-on experience with Stripe, authentication systems, and deployment workflows The importance of clear data modeling and validation That solving everyday student problems can have a big community impact

What’s Next for CuseRents

Launching in other university campuses Adding chat and notification features between renters and owners Implementing ratings and reviews for better trust Enabling cloud-based photo uploads via Cloudinary Building a mobile-friendly PWA version for on-the-go rentals

Built With

• axios
• css)
• django-allauth-payments:-stripe-api-(python-sdk)-database:-sqlite-(development)
• django-cors-headers-environment-&-deployment:-python-virtualenv
• django-rest-framework-authentication:-dj-rest-auth
• frontend:-react-(javascript
• lucide-icons-backend:-django-5
• node.js
• postgresql-(production-ready)-cloud-services:-cloudinary-(image-hosting)
• python-decouple
• whitenoise-(static-files)-apis-&-utilities:-google-maps-api