Editor’s note: This Q&A is lightly edited and shortened for clarity and style.

Recent University of Wisconsin graduate Harshet Anand is the creator of Rentle, a free housing app crafted specifically for students that is set to release in September. The Badger Herald talked to Anand about his decision to build Rentle and how it differs from other apps on the market. See the transcript below.

What was the inspiration for this app?

I spent four years at UW dealing with the apartment-hunting problem myself every spring, every fall, it was the same exhausting cycle — scrolling through Facebook groups, either they’re full of scams or browsing apartments.com or Zillow. These were all just built for the generic audience or a lot of the time, professionals who are working there full-time and not specifically for college students.

After I graduated, I surveyed about 200 college students with 72% finding off campus very difficult. That’s about 148 under 44 students. The top complaints were that comparing apartments was very overwhelming, that leasing offices were unresponsive and scheduling tours was too much back and forth. 

That member told me that it wasn’t just my experience, it was a campus wide problem. 

Then I started to talk to property managers, and I heard the other side of the story, and one of my partners at one of the apartments in Madison, told me that he pays about $2,400 a year for apartments.com and last year he got just one signed lease. 

So you have students who can’t find apartments and property managers who can’t reach students, even though they’re only about a mile apart at most. That disconnect is exactly why I built rental and what rental solves.

What does Rentle offer that other apartment finding applications don’t (Apartments.com, UW Madison Campus Apartments website, Zillow, etc.)?

Apartments.com and Zillow are probably the two biggest apartment hunting platforms. Even the UW campus housing site is there, and they’re all built for the general renter. 

Their desktop is very listing heavy, and there’s no real connection between students and property managers. You’re essentially just browsing a wall of listings and filling out a contact form, and half the time you won’t get a response or you’re not keeping track of who you’re connecting to or emailing with. 

Rentle is built specifically for college students. You’re you swipe through apartments on your phone, message property managers directly and schedule tours all in one app, and each card — the card represents an apartment — shows their photos, pricing, floor plans, distance to campus and amenities.

We have about 12 property management partners signed in Madison [including Steve Brown Apartments, Madison Property Management and Palisade Apartments].

Why did you decide to create a swipe-based interface rather than traditional listings?

I’d sort of look at the two reasons, first being that students are already used to swiping. You see how they interact with everything on their phones — matching, dating apps and whatnot, but traditional listing sites give you a wall of essentially 200 apartments, and expect you to just scroll through all of them, which is very overwhelming for students, especially for freshmen or sophomores.

A swipe interface shows you one apartment at a time with everything you need to make a quick decision based on the filter you set. If you like it, you swipe right and you’re connected with the property manager. If it’s not for you, just simply swipe left and move on. It turns one of the most stressful parts of college into something that feels a lot more manageable for students.

And the second reason is swiping creates that engagement. Students come back daily to see what’s new, and that daily habit is what builds a real marketplace. And so one of the platforms that I believe is going around in Madison is called Fizz, the anonymous student platform at Madison. 

I posted my idea about building a swipe-based interface app for college apartments and within an hour and a half, it got 137 upvotes. 

How did you start working on Rentle? Do you think your education at UW helped you at all?

I started building Rentle a few months into my first job out of college after graduating from UW in May 2025. For a while I was working on it nights and weekends while holding a full time data scientist job, but I recently have actually gone full time on rental to focus on the data launch and growth. 

As for whether my degrees helped me, I think they really did. I graduated with a degree in computer science and data science — double major — and for me, they were absolutely essential. 

UW gave me the technical foundation to build a production mobile app and backend completely solo, which is something most founders sort of need an entire engineering team for. But the professors, the coursework, the project based learning I all did during the four years all shaped how I approach building software. 

But beyond the technical side, I think what helped the most was being a student there for four years and actually living the housing problem firsthand. That kind of experience is something you can’t learn in a classroom.

What would you say to students or postgrads looking to create an app or launch a business?

I think the biggest tip I’d say is start before you feel ready. That’s the single most important thing. I didn’t wait for funding. I didn’t wait for a co-founder. I didn’t wait for permission to build this. I just instantly started building because I knew that this was a problem I was passionate about and I wanted to solve.