A new tool is making its way around campus, helping students make choices on appropriate apartment prices and the necessity of roommates.
The Average Rent Calculator is a function of Splitwise, a Rhode Island-based company that offers its services through an app and a website. The calculator shows the average prices of apartments in a specified area.
Users can enter a ZIP code and the website compiles graphs of data covering most U.S. ZIP codes, but not as many in rural areas, said Zoe Chaves, one of the makers of the Average Rent Calculator. The data comes from a company in San Francisco that sells residential real estate wholesale to realtors and contains around 2 million listings across the U.S.
For each ZIP code, the website offers the average rent per bedroom, the average rent per square foot, the number of apartments of different sizes in the area and the amount of money saved if the user has roommates.
Splitwise is like “cloud bookkeeping,” Chaves said, an online way for students and their roommates to manage their finances.
The service can be used to track the money the user owes, the money the user is owed and the total balance. It also sends out reminders of “IOUs.” The app can track bills and will split them automatically among the roommates. Users can electronically pay their roommates back and electronically accept payments.