Find Your Next Apartment in the Bay Area Using Facebook Data

PLEASANTON, Calif., Sept. 27, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- RentalRoost, the pioneer in lifestyle-based home and apartment finding, has launched a website that algorithmically ranks houses and apartments by lifestyle criteria that truly matter. Currently available in the Bay Area, RentalRoost gives everyone from students and young professionals to families and retirees the intelligence they need to select a great apartment or house in a new, unfamiliar city. The new search platform, soon to be available in all US cities, promises to help an increasingly mobile population find homes and neighborhoods they will love.

On RentalRoost, users can type in a location, view locations on a map or even browse neighborhoods by specific lifestyle criteria including school quality, kid-friendliness, transit, dining, shopping, arts and culture and pet-friendliness, alongside traditional criteria like bedrooms, baths and price. For each neighborhood, users can also view detailed demographics such as pie charts of marital status, household income, occupations, academic achievement and more.   

For instance, a family whose priority is to send their kids to the best schools in San Francisco can search homes by school ratings provided by GreatSchools. They will likely be led to one of the Richmond districts, which have the highest ranking schools in the city, all scoring in the mid-80s. Cautious parents can use RentalRoost to check if any sex offenders live close to the school.  If parents get a great school recommendation, they could also search by school to guarantee that their new home is in the school district.  

In contrast, a young, single professional without a car might be led to the SoMa neighborhood, where the Walk Score is a 95, the Transit Score is a strong 100 and the Dining (82) and Shopping (94) options are great. A student, on the other hand, can actually select his or her college and view apartments or houses within a chosen distance. The result is a customized, personal search experience.

"As professionals in the tech world, my co-founders and I had always found moving from one city to another very stressful," said Nitin Shingate, co-founder and CEO of RentalRoost. "We realized that people unfamiliar with a new city would have a challenging time finding the right neighborhood, so we created a way to help people find homes based on their lifestyle and particular needs."

Users can also benefit from RentalRoost's recommendation engine, which takes basic Facebook data--like age, marital status, friend's locations and demographics--to make personalized housing recommendations for homes and apartments in a designated price and size range.

RentalRoost has already helped consumers and even realtors find the best possible housing options. As Elizabeth Monsanto, a realtor with Penner Homes Real Estate, commented, "Rental Roost is my direct source to find up-to-date rental properties for my clients.  It is the only site that has allowed me to customize my search based on my client's lifestyle and needs."

Shingate and co-founders Vikram Raghavan and Harini Venkatesan have set out to build a complete ecosystem for easy, personalized home searches and tenant screenings. In addition to RentalRoost, they have launched Houserie, a secure and cost-efficient system that landlords can use to screen tenants.

To learn more about RentalRoost, visit www.rentalroost.com.

About RentalRoost
RentalRoost is the first house and apartment finding engine that generates recommendations based on lifestyle. With over 20 search dimensions, RentalRoost's proprietary patent-pending algorithms deliver an intuitive and precise search experience. Based in Pleasanton, CA, RentalRoost was founded by Nitin Shingate, Vikram Raghavan, and Harini Venkatesan, three entrepreneurs with a vision of making the daunting task of house-hunting easier and much more efficient. RentalRoost's sister site Houserie provides a fast, secure and comprehensive tenant screen service for landlords.    

SOURCE RentalRoost