RentHop: Smarter Apartment Search
Apartment hunting can be overwhelming, but we realized that finding a new home isn't about looking at every apartment listing, it's about looking at the best ones. Quality, not quantity.
With the powers of math and technology combined, we created RentHop, a site that sorts listings by quality. We know you don't want to see listings without photos or from unresponsive landlords and brokers, so unlike other sites that only sort by price or posting date, our HopScore (a sophisticated set of algorithms) ranks apartment listings by quality, so only the best rise to the top.
We currently serve New York, Boston, and Chicago.
After going through the grueling New York apartment hunting process ourselves, we decided there had to be a better way to do it. We founded RentHop and officially launched through the Y Combinator Summer 2009 program. During the process we also both became licensed real estate agents to better understand the work apartment brokers do.
Lee is a data geek from MIT who spent years at
quantitative hedge funds cranking out models to explain and
predict financial markets. Real estate has always been a big
part of Lee's life. He grew up helping out at his parents'
Jersey Shore motels, became a landlord his first year out of
college, analyzed mortgages on a fixed-income trading desk, and
acquired a New York real estate license. At RentHop, he combines
his nerd talents and real estate knowledge to constantly tweak
the secret HopScore. He currently lives near Bryant Park and his
favorite restaurant is Cafe Zaiya.
While Li graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Electrical Engineering, he's dropped his Fourier transforms to tackle the world of startups and real estate. Straight out of college, he worked as a commercial real-estate analyst at a major investment bank. After an extremely stressful renting experience during the inflation scare of 2008, he laid the groundwork for RentHop with Lee. At RentHop, he codes and drinks copious amounts of caffeine. He lives in Hell's Kitchen and couldn't live without Lenny's salads and Dunkin Donuts coffee.
Reach us by emailing feedback@renthop.com or by chatting with us live using the Olark chat widget on our help page.
