The New Digital Gatekeepers: How 100 Is Rebuilding Trust in the Rental Market

NEW YORK, NY – June 09, 2026 – The process of renting an apartment has long been a system fraught with friction, paperwork, and gut feelings. But in recent years, that friction has been weaponized. The trust that underpins the landlord-tenant relationship is eroding under a sophisticated, digitally-fueled assault of rental fraud. In response, a new class of digital gatekeepers is emerging, not to create higher walls, but to build smarter, more transparent gateways. A leading example is the PropTech firm 100, which today announced a pair of strategic moves that signal a significant escalation in the industry's fight against fraud: the acquisition of fintech-grade AI platform Cobblestone and its formal selection as a Preferred Partner by a slate of the nation's largest multifamily operators, including Asset Living, Knightvest Residential, and RAM Partners.

These are not just incremental updates; they represent a fundamental re-architecting of how trust is established and verified in the massive multifamily housing market. By integrating advanced financial technology and securing buy-in from industry giants, 100 is making a bold statement: the legacy system is broken, and the only way forward is to rebuild it with a new, more resilient digital foundation.

A System at Its Breaking Point

The scale of the rental fraud crisis is staggering and provides the essential context for 100’s recent moves. According to the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC), a staggering 93% of its members have experienced rental application fraud. More alarmingly, over 70% of that fraud was not discovered until after a fraudulent tenant had already moved in, transforming a verification issue into a costly and complex operational nightmare involving eviction proceedings and significant lost revenue. The financial fallout is immense, with the FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report tracking $275 million in losses directly attributed to real estate fraud.

This is not the work of amateur opportunists. The modern rental fraud landscape is powered by increasingly accessible and sophisticated technology, including AI-driven tools that can generate hyper-realistic fake pay stubs, bank statements, and even synthetic identities. What once required specialized skills can now be accomplished with a few clicks, creating a flood of deceptive applications that can easily overwhelm traditional, manual review processes. For property managers, the challenge is no longer just about spotting a doctored PDF; it's about combating a technologically advanced adversary in a high-stakes digital arms race.

Forging a Fintech-Grade Defense

It is in this environment that 100’s acquisition of Cobblestone becomes less of a simple business transaction and more of a strategic military reinforcement. Cobblestone is not a typical PropTech startup. It was founded by Jason Scharff and Jack Mastrangelo, early engineers from Ramp, a corporate finance company renowned for its advanced underwriting systems. They bring a fintech DNA—a rigorous, data-centric approach to risk and verification—to the real estate world.

Cobblestone's platform is an intricate system designed for this new era of fraud. It combines an AI-native income verification engine with a multitude of data sources. In a novel approach, it employs what the company calls a “chorus of LLMs cross-checking each other,” using multiple large language models to analyze documents and data, with each model acting as a check on the others to ensure accuracy and integrity. This automated, multi-layered analysis is then backstopped by human oversight, creating a hybrid system that pairs the speed and scale of AI with the nuance of human expertise. By acquiring this technology and bringing its founders on as Strategic Advisors, 100 is embedding a financial-grade underwriting discipline directly into the rental application workflow.

“100 is already category-defining,” said Jason Scharff, CEO and Co-Founder of Cobblestone, in a statement. “By bringing our underwriting experience into the platform, 100 has an unfair advantage that drives smarter decision-making and greater impact across the industry.”

From Market Entrant to Industry Standard

Technology, no matter how advanced, is only as impactful as its adoption. This is where 100’s second milestone comes into play. The designation as a Preferred Partner by firms like Asset Living (the #2 largest property manager in the U.S.), Knightvest Residential, and RAM Partners (#17 on the NMHC list) is a powerful vote of confidence. These are not small-scale pilot programs; they represent enterprise-level commitments from companies that manage hundreds of thousands of rental units combined. This adoption by industry titans signifies a shift for 100 from an interesting PropTech curiosity to an essential piece of enterprise infrastructure.

The results reported by the company underscore this momentum. With an average of 25% month-over-month revenue growth since its launch, 100 is on one of the fastest growth trajectories in PropTech history. Customers are reportedly seeing a 67% increase in application processing speed, a critical metric in a competitive rental market. More importantly, the company projects it will help its partners save over $100 million in bad debt in 2026 alone—a direct countermeasure to the losses plaguing the industry.

“100 is one of the fastest-growing companies in our portfolio, and it's not by accident. Caren and the team have done something rare - built a product the market actually needed, then scaled it with discipline,” noted Zach Aarons, Co-Founder and General Partner at MetaProp. Caren Maio, CEO and Co-Founder of 100, added, “We've proven that trust and speed aren't a tradeoff. We're not waiting for the moment. We're making it.”

Can Automation Engineer Fairness?

Beyond fraud and friction, 100’s platform makes the ambitious claim of helping to eliminate bias from the rental process. The underlying theory is compelling: by automating the verification of objective data like identity and income, the system can replace subjective human judgment with consistent, algorithmic scrutiny. Cobblestone’s philosophy was to apply “intense scrutiny, equally” to every application, thereby removing the potential for the unconscious biases that can influence human reviewers.

By creating a standardized, auditable workflow where criteria are set in advance, the technology aims to ensure that every applicant is evaluated on the same financial and logistical merits. This approach holds the promise of creating a more equitable housing landscape. However, the complex challenge of algorithmic bias is well-documented, and claims of its complete elimination warrant careful scrutiny. While the logic of standardized automation is a powerful step toward fairness, the industry will be watching for independent audits and further data to validate the long-term effectiveness of this new, systematized approach to leasing.