Check out the follow interview with Shubham Kansal and Suhel Brar of RentHost!

Tell me about yourself.

At RentHost (@RentHost), we are a team of two – Shubham Kansal who is a recent graduate of the University of Waterloo with a degree in software engineering and Suhel Brar, a former student of McMaster University. As students, engineers, and aspiring entrepreneurs our goal is to find logical and feasible solutions to everyday problems.

What is RentHost?

RentHost is a free online service that allows students to search off-campus housing smartly and efficiently by providing them a beautiful search interface, reviews by past tenants and a set of additional tools to make their search less painful.

What makes RentHost different than other rental search apps?

Currently, students use online classifieds or their university’s off-campus housing site to search for rental houses. Students have to continually check for new listings on these sites as they become available. At RentHost, we allow students to save their search criteria and notify them as houses matching their search criteria become available. They no longer have to repeatedly visit the site to check for new properties. We also provide unbiased reviews left by past tenants to help future tenants make an informed decision.

Where did you get the idea for RentHost?

When I was a student at McMaster, I rented a house with a few of my friends through McMaster’s off-campus housing site. While renting, we used to hear strange noises in the house and had no idea what it was. Upon investigation, it was found that a raccoon was living in the house. If there was a way to get feedback from previous tenants before renting the house, this situation could have easily been avoided. With such personal experiences, we decided to build RentHost to help fellow students find safe and reliable housing in a quick and easy manner.

How can readers use RentHost?

To search for off-campus housing, readers can go to the RentHost Search page and begin searching over 250 properties around McMaster University.

If you have already rented an off-campus house, sign up to post reviews and help out your fellow students.

Where do you see RentHost going in the future?

In future, we see RentHost as the largest one-stop service for all renting needs from finding a reliable and safe property, to contacting landlords, to paying rent to the most important part of it all, writing reviews and making use of them. We are starting at the McMaster University, and our goal is to be able to help students at universities all across Canada.

How can the community help you make RentHost a bigger success?

Community is the largest and the most important thread in making RentHost a bigger success. To begin with, posting reviews and asking your friends to post reviews will create a greater value to the site and to your fellow students looking for a safe and reliable place to rent. In addition, we always welcome your feedback and new ideas to help us serve you better. Please feel free to drop us a line at our Facebook page or tweet us @RentHost.

RentHost: http://renthost.ca/

RentHost Manager: http://renthost.ca/owners.html

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/renthost

Twitter: https://twitter.com/renthost

Google+: https://plus.google.com/+RentHostCanada/posts

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/renthostmedia