University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate Harshet Anand is revolutionizing the housing market with his brand new approach to apartment hunting. Meant to simplify the difficult and time consuming apartment hunting process, Rentle works like a free dating app.
The app provides a slide card for each of the apartments listed with details about pricing, location, bedrooms and amenities.
“It’s similar to Tinder: swipe right if you like it, left if you don’t,” Anand told The Daily Cardinal.
Rentle is designed to be intuitive to the younger generation. After swiping right on an apartment, the app allows you to directly message the property manager and schedule a tour.
One of Anand’s main goals for the app is to help students avoid dealing with unresponsive landlords. “It’s built around how Gen Z actually makes decisions, mobile-first, swipe-based, simple.” Anand said.
Anand graduated from UW-Madison in May 2025 with degrees in computer and data sciences. His background provides him with first hand knowledge of what Badgers are looking for in their housing search.
“I came in as a freshman, barely knew the city, and within a month I already had to look for off-campus housing,” Anand said. “UW-Madison definitely helped me build the technical skills, but the real inspiration came from living the problem myself.”
His technological and real estate experience comes from his time as a data scientist at F Street Investment. Anand worked alongside property managers and real estate investors building machine-learning models–giving him a unique insight to the housing industry.
“These experiences gave me the credibility to say I understand both sides of the student housing problem,” Anand said.
Rentle also attempts to address the affordable housing crisis through its filter options. The app allows students to set a budget before beginning their apartment hunt —making it easier to pick units while analyzing each possibility’s other qualities.
Anand describes the struggle of comparing places as “opening multiple tabs and scrolling back and forth,” but his app is able to address this through “show[ing] the core information in the same format — photos, rent, bedrooms, amenities — so your brain naturally compares them as you swipe.”
Before developing the app fully, Anand told the Cardinal he sent out a survey in November 2025 to see how Madison’s student housing issue compared to the rest of the country. The survey, which received 200 responses, reflected that 72% of respondents found finding housing “difficult or very difficult.”
Anand also took to UW-Madison’s Fizz page, an online social community with dedicated pages for hundreds of universities, and asked who would be interested in a “Tinder for college apartments.” Within an hour and a half Anand said it had 140 upvotes, further validating his desire to create the app.
He then took action by emailing property managers, including Steve Brown Apartments and Madison Property Management, looking to bridge the gap between students struggling to find housing and management companies seeking to fill units. They reciprocated their concerns about getting through to students, and within the first week of the app being developed, four property managers were interested.
Now, Anand said 17 property management companies are interested in the full launch with 10 already signed up for beta testing.
Rentle will launch in September 2026 —just in time for the fall lease signing season.
“I want Rentle to become the default platform for college students across the country to find off-campus housing,” Anand said. “Rentle’s mission is meant to be student-focused forever.”
