Rentometer: Are You Paying Too Much For Rent?

By Shan Sadiq • Oct 3, 2006

Rentometer makes it easy to find out if you are paying too much for rent. It’s essentially a tool that tracks average rental prices in areas. It compares what you are paying for rent to average rental prices in your area to tell you if your rent is above or below average. Its interface is exceptionally clean and uncluttered.

When you go to the homepage, Rentometer requests your address, rental property type, and the amount of rent you are paying for the property. Once you enter your information and click on “Analyze my Property,” you are taken to another simple-looking page that informs you whether you are paying too much for rent. You also get a Google map showing where your rent stands in contrast to other local rental properties.

Rentometer is a great tool that many people will find useful. However, it does need to improve in a few areas. There were a number of local rental locations it could not find the average rental prices for. And some of the prices it listed were way out of context.

I would be interested to learn where Rentometer gets its data from. It looks like Rentometer is created by iiProperty, a company that makes an online property management solution. According to the iiProperty website, their web-based software stores rent information on customer properties. Therefore, it’s possible that Rentometer extracts rental informant from iiProperty’s supposedly secure customer database.

If you look beyond Rentometer’s shady data acquiring technique, it has the potential to become an exceptionally useful tool.