What did you build, and how does it address the prompt?
A renter finds a new apartment, gets the lease, and is asked to sign quickly. The monthly rent is clear. The extra fees, deadlines, and fine print may not be. Later, a charge appears that the renter doesn’t remember agreeing to—or a move-out bill deducts money from their deposit without a clear explanation. Challenging it can mean searching through a long lease, trying to understand unfamiliar rules, and figuring out what to say to a landlord. Many renters don’t have the time or confidence to do all that, so they pay and move on.
LeaseClear is a tenant-side rental billing audit demo designed to make that process easier. It guides renters through a sample lease and bill, shows how a charge can be compared with the agreement and relevant Illinois or Chicago rules, estimates the money in dispute, and prepares a portal message, demand-letter preview, and complaint information. The goal is to turn confusing paperwork into a clearer explanation and a practical next step.
Our target users are renters who need help understanding lease terms, recurring fees, late charges, or move-out deductions—especially people without easy access to legal help. LeaseClear is designed to help them see what deserves a closer look and communicate their concerns with more confidence.
How did you build it?
We built the MVP as a web app using Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and reusable interface components. The experience takes a renter from document selection to an audit report, with discrepancy explanations and escalation templates. The demo includes sample lease and billing materials so someone can explore the experience without bringing their own documents.
We focused the prototype on making the audit understandable: showing the charge, the relevant lease or rule, the potential amount at stake, and a suggested action. The current demo is a product proof of concept; its report relies on sample case facts rather than extracting and verifying information from uploaded documents. A production version would need reliable PDF and image extraction, secure document handling, and thoroughly verified legal rules.
What issues did you run into, and how did you overcome them?
One challenge was keeping the experience focused on the renter’s real problem. It would be easy to build a broad legal-information tool, but renters need a direct path from “this bill looks wrong” to “here’s why it may be wrong, and here’s what I can do next.” We shaped the demo around that journey, using a discrepancy breakdown and ready-to-edit escalation materials.
We also recognized a timing challenge in the business model. LeaseClear may be most useful in the short window after a renter receives a lease and before they sign it, when they can still ask questions about fees or terms. Reaching renters at that exact moment through standalone marketing could be difficult.
Our proposed solution is to bring LeaseClear to renters where they are already searching for a home. We would pursue a partnership with Homes.com that places lease review near the point where a prospective renter is evaluating a property or preparing to sign. For Homes.com, the value proposition is greater peace of mind for renters. We believe a trusted renter-support experience could strengthen Homes.com’s reputation, encourage more people to use the platform, and create opportunities to grow traffic, advertising revenue, and customer relationships. This is a partnership hypothesis to validate, not an existing Homes.com agreement.
How can we implement this further?
The next step is to turn the demo into a secure, reliable audit workflow. That means implementing real PDF and photo extraction, comparing extracted charges with lease terms, asking users to confirm uncertain details, and clearly linking each legal finding to current official sources. We would also add encrypted document storage, deletion controls, deadline reminders, and testing with renters and housing advocates.
We would then pilot the experience with a small group of renters and measure whether it helps them understand charges, resolve disputes, and feel more confident before signing. In parallel, we would explore a Homes.com integration that makes lease review available at the moment renters need it. Any monetization—whether a referral, subscription, or outcome-based fee—would need to be transparent, validated with users, and reviewed for legal and consumer-protection requirements.
Built With
- chatgpt
- claudecode
- codex
- next.js
- react
- tailwind
- typescript
