There always comes a time when you’re ready to switch to “new digs” in a new area, neighborhood, or city.  Personally, I find it as quite a task to go through a sea of rental websites then, another sea of neighborhood statistics sites as well.  Recently, I’ve been recommended to check out Rent Jungle online and take it for a test-drive to search for apartments.  Being that I may be in the market soon for an apartment of my own – it registered on my Tech Radar.

Rent Jungle is a pretty straight forward and well organized apartment search site that aggregates data from several popular apartment sites.  Searching is broken into straight forward city, state search box or by US State > City > Neighborhood (the neighborhood feature is very cool).  It has some distinct plusses that many other sites do not have such as price comparison, Facebook integration, and Neighborhood reports. 

Usability

While I was using it, I found the site to be well programmed and it ran very fast (I hope it stays that way as it gains in popularity).  For the average Tech for the Masses reader, I think its very user friendly and has a system that isn’t too confusing. If you want more then apartment search, they also offer an online community message board to share experiences or ask renting questions – very nice for first timers.

Tech Factor: Neighborhood & Rent Comparison

Once you get into the city/state of where you are searching a nifty little sidebar appears.  It offers information such as Neighborhood browsing, average rent in this area, Rent vs Own stats, median age, population, families with kids, and average commute times for that area.  The geek in me screams “very cool” on this information being so readily available.  So far, I’ve not seen this on other sites (at least not right in my face and easily viewable).

Another very tech smart tool is the Rent Price Comparison. They offer a nifty price comparison that aggregates data with other renters in your area or particular neighborhoods to see what everyone else is paying. For me being interested in finance as well as tech, this may give a few of us the upper hand in negotiating lower monthly rent.  Nice job RentJungle, Nice job.

Networking

This site relies heavily on networking and using many other established sites.  Now that isn’t entirely a bad thing because you can think of it as they’ve done all the web-surfing for you.  But you need to realize that they are providing a clean front-end that redirects to other websites for detailed property information.

RentJungle also has integrated Facebook/Twitter into their website which I think is a huge boon. Anyone creating sites now should give people the opportunity to share their findings and views with the Facebook or Twitter world.

Overview

RentJungle’s interface is clean and the experience is fast.  However it is not without the standard foray of ads like those of similiar sites.  In general, RentJungle puts a up a nice interface (or front-end) and pulls its data from several other well known sources – such as Aparments.com and Google (for mapping).  It’s apartment search and neighborhood research done easy with minimal invasion by ads.

The bottom line is the fact that it lets you compare rent, gives you neighborhood information/statistics, and displays apartment data from several sources in a well organized interface.  Because of this I will keep this functional website in my Favorites for apartment searches for quite awhile.

What their next step should be?  “HouseJungle.com” – and use the same interface (similiar to Zillow.com) to find available houses in the your desired area.  Did I just hear cha-ching?  Great, because it’s something to consider.

Check out Rent Jungle right here @ Rent Jungle Apartment Search

If anyone else has a review or would like to share their experience, please post your thoughts!