It’s a Beautiful Day for a Neighbor with RentWiki.com
I came to Boston in September 2004 as a freshman at Boston University. Since that time, I’ve lived in three different dorm rooms and four different apartment buildings, with a total of eight different roommates and spanning three distinct neighborhoods. Still, I’m hardly a special case–this is just how life is for the thousands of college students and young professionals in Boston and in cities around the country.
For me, moving has always seemed like a bit of a crapshoot. You MIGHT like the neighborhood, you MIGHT like the building, you MIGHT not hate your neighbors, but you’re really jumping into a new living situation blindly. And that’s the problem RentWiki.com hopes to solve.
RentWiki.com recently announced the official launch of its site, which serves to help apartment hunters learn more about rental properties and the culture of different neighborhoods through a social networking community. While the site still lacks a deep level of content for most cities, RentWiki.com has the potential to be a great resource for anyone looking to rent property in a new neighborhood.
The site aims to offer a look at daily life at the neighborhood level in a wiki format via locally contributed content, neighborhood reviews, pros and cons, and renter recommendations. As the site and its content grow, RentWiki.com has promise to become a tool that will help people find an apartment, condo or neighborhood to fit their personal style, taste and financial needs through seeing what people who actually live there have to say about the area.
Time will tell if people jump on this idea and contribute their thoughts to the site–I’m certainly interested to see how the Boston content develops. Would you utilize a resource like this?
Helping People, Social Networks | Comments (4)4 Responses to “It’s a Beautiful Day for a Neighbor with RentWiki.com”
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[...] It’s a Beautiful Day for a Neighbour with RentWiki.com Peer advice on where to live. Social media triumphs once again. When can we expect this in the UK? Thanks to Social Honeycomb for the post. (tags: wiki) [...]
My only concern is that it will go the way of most great ideas. The people with money to make in the communities will become more active, the site will end up being monetized by the very people it should be warning you about, and content negative to the interests of those parties will, eventually, be eradicated.
Cynical? Yep…but you see it so often…
Still a great idea.
David
Hi David,
That’s a great point, and I can relate to how that has happened to other review sites. We’re hoping that the user community and voice supersedes any companies incentive to create inaccurate and self-promoting content. Similar to Yelp, we hope that 1 false review yeilds 5 people to rebuttal how false and wrong that review was.
We just started and are continuing to learn more about what renters want. We love feedback, both positive and negative, so if you have any ideas on how we can better help renters, email me!
Bests,
Eric C. Wu
Community Manager, RentWiki.com
415.640.4970 // eric@rentwiki.com
Connecting with your neighborhood and neighbors can be a challenge. With local – social apartment living guides that challenge is removed.