We almost moved to the States

📅 Free webinar: Tenant screening techniques

​I very often get asked how best to screen a rental applicant. The thing is, I haven't screened an applicant for any rental in a very long time.

I’m hosting two Canadian companies (Rentpedia and TrueTenant) on Tues. October 27, 2026, at 7:00PM ET for a free webinar on tenant screening techniques.

Rentpedia’s team builds and manages 1,000+ rental units and have partnered up with TrueTenant for tenant screening. Both Canadian and obviously they can share WAY more with you than me - so I invite you to join in!

Whether you screen one tenant a year or a hundred, bring your questions. We’ll answer as many as we can live.

✏️ Two more industry events in Toronto this month

👩🏻‍💻 My Personal Thoughts

I was downtown for a housewarming party.

The house was an office. The hosts run a phone system used by more than 90,000 businesses.

The company is Quo.

Quo started with two University of Waterloo students, Mahyar and Daryna. They came to Canada from Iran and Ukraine, met at school, and got married. They built the first version of their app in Kitchener-Waterloo. In 2018, they got into Y Combinator and moved to San Francisco, like a lot of Canadian founders do. I wish that were not the case, but it is what it is.

I actually learned about them a few years ago while browsing LinkedIn. I was fascinated with their story because my co-founder, Vishal, also went to the University of Waterloo. Vishal and I are partners at Openroom but also in life. To me, it’s always nice to see couples who work well together.

Vishal and I had contemplated going to the States a few times. But it always ended up with ‘nah, we’re staying!’.

For Quo’s journey, eight years later, they came back and opened an office in Toronto. From internet strangers to getting an invite from Daryna personally to celebrate their office opening.

You’ve probably heard “build in Canada” and “buy Canadian” a lot more over the last year. For Vishal and me, it comes down to something simple. While Quo went to SF to start, they’ve never forgotten about Canada. They are back!

When a company makes something good, we use it, we pay for it, we tell our friends about it, and we show up when they throw a party.

No, this isn’t a sponsorship post but if you want a referral, click here as we both get credits. I really just wanted to share other great businesses. As for Quo, we run our Openroom business lines on Quo and we’ve loved them since Day 1!

When I believe in a business, I become its biggest hype girl. If you’re one of the 73K people in the Openroom community and you own a business, hit reply and tell me about it. I’d love to give you a shout-out in a future edition!

Perhaps bring a family or friend to one of the events!

Until next time, have a very happy and Canadian Thanksgiving weekend my friends! 🦃

Weiting Bollu
Mom, Rental Housing Provider, Rental Housing Advocate, Educator, and Openroom Co-Founder & CEO

Openroom collects public tenancy records and connects them to the broader financial credit system to help you make informed decisions on who to rent from and rent to.

We enable you to screen tenants or future landlords, help you report rental debt, give rewards to great residents, or bundle it all into BureauEdge.

We also educate about rental housing and we advocate for a more transparent and connected rental ecosystem to support both responsible housing providers and residents. Send us an opinion piece to [email protected].