Rent Jungle: First Rental Housing Search Engine
Pittsburgh, PA – November 25, 2010 – (RealEstateRama) — Rent Jungle (www.rentjungle.com) unveiled an industry-first web site, allowing apartment and rental-house hunters to search the contents of listings from thousands of other web sites – using spidering and indexing technologies similar to that of a search engine, but dedicated exclusively to the rental housing industry.
Industry-First Aggregation
“In just about every other industry, there’s a site or two that aggregates data from all of the other sites and puts it together in one place, for example, Kayak.com in travel” said Jon Pastor, CEO and Co-Founder. “Until now, there’s been nothing of the sort in this market – just the sharing of listings via data feeds. This has obvious limitations.”
The company is the first in its industry to spider and index thousands of other web sites to identify available rental-housing listings. “Our technology can identify all of the relevant information about a rental listing – price, bedrooms, bathrooms, exact location – and turn it into a fully searchable listing on Rentjungle.com,” said Pastor. “And we can aggregate this data directly from apartment managers’ web sites, rather than relying on a data feed.”
The result is the most complete collection of currently-available rental housing listings, said Pastor. “We are capturing well over 80% of all listings on the web.”
Beyond Bedrooms and Bathrooms: Natural Search Technology
Rent Jungle is the first in its class to introduce natural search technology. “Almost every listing site lets you search by price, bedrooms, and bathrooms; but try searching for only rentals that include ocean views,” said Pastor. “We’re letting users include terms like ‘ocean view’ in their search queries, and returning only listings that include those keywords.“
Similar to today’s familiar search engines, Rent Jungle’s search results include the search queries in bold text, allowing the visitor to see the results in the context in which they appear in each listing.
“By letting our users search for specific keywords, and by aggregating listings from thousands of sites — not just our own unique listings — we’re making Rent Jungle the ultimate one-stop shop for rental housing hunters,” said Pastor.
Neighborhood Rental Housing Statistics
Rent Jungle’s searching technology can also be used to calculate statistics on each neighborhood’s relative average rental rates – allowing users to easily identify geographical areas that best match their housing budget. Additionally, the site’s “Compare Your Rent” tool helps users identify their current rental rate vs. the average rate for similar apartments or rental houses in a given neighborhood.
Map-Based Apartment Search
The site’s search results can also be viewed and filtered in an interactive map view. For example a search for “loft” in Chicago will display a map of the city, with markers designating only rental listings designated as lofts by the site’s keyword-matching architecture. Bedrooms, bathrooms, and price ranges can also be filtered using convenient sliders located beside the map – allowing users to zero in on the apartments or rental houses that match their criteria, and hide those that do not.
Company Information:
Site: www.rentjungle.com
Founded: 2009
Ownership: Private
Management:
Jon Pastor, CEO and Co-Founder
Geng Wang, CMO and Co-Founder
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Media Contact
Rent Jungle, LLC
700 River Avenue, Suite 542
Pittsburgh, PA 15208
877.300.2505
www.rentjungle.com
