Marginal. I mean for this to really work its needs lots of...

Marginal. I mean for this to really work its needs lots of renters and landlords with there independent private values (IPV) distributed in way that the auctions are optimal way ensure efficient price discovery.

So for landlords on average this means their rental reserve price = market price for the area and conversely this principle will apply to the renters.

However you also need to factor in risk because neither side knows what the others IPV is and for landlords you could assume in the current market they would discount their reserve based on this risk factor. So the question then becomes is better to discount the advertised rental rate publicly to get a tenant in quicker or to auction the property for with the resulting lower expect rental rate.

The point of all the above is that auctions are complicated transactions that involve a lot factors and I'm not convinced that rental market is ripe for that sort of disruption, a market that is increasing looking oversupplied as well.