Your search for an apartment just got a lot more thorough.
A new, free service designed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University aims to help people find a rental property by estimating the utility costs based on the unit itself and also the renter’s personal habits and lifestyle.
Jennifer Mankoff, associate professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute and co-leader on the project, said EDigs was inspired by a former Ph.D. student’s work studying the relationships between landlords and low-income tenants.
“That then became a much larger question of what it means for … how we can empower renters to have better information about rental properties across many different types of information, and how this can allow a community to collaboratively work towards achieving their goals with respect to housing,” Mankoff said.
Researchers asked both tenants and landlords what they knew and what they wished they knew before renting an apartment; they found utility costs were a chief concern. EDigs generates a rough estimate on utility costs for a prospective tenant by collecting data from the Residential Energy Consumption Survey, the advertisements for the rental properties and the tenant seeking the rental.
The rental advertisement gives a general idea of the property itself, and the Residential Energy Consumption Survey provides an estimate on how much energy is used, Mankoff said.
The website also asks users to report their own personal habits, such as how high they turn up the heat in the winter or the air conditioning in the summer, to get an idea of how much energy the prospective renter would use.
Researchers designed EDigs to become more accurate it amasses more data by creating a regression algorithm using a type of artificial intelligence called machine learning.
Users will also be able to post pictures onto the website for others to browse and leave property reviews.
“The nice thing about people visiting apartments is that sort of crowdsourcing kind of effect," Mankoff said. "The more people that are out looking for housing using EDigs, the more comprehensive a data set we’ll have about the housing in Pittsburgh.”
Officials said they hope to gather enough information to reach out to community leaders with data that could help in policymaking.
To use the program, access its website or download the app from Google Play.
