Are you looking to split the rent but can’t figure out an easy way to do it? You should check out splittherent.com. Split The Rent is a rent calculator that makes organizing bills and rent for multiple renters simple and fast. We spoke with SplitTheRent designer and Founder, Jonathan Bittner, about the product and it’s future.
What prompted you to create splittherent.com and how long did it take?
I’m the creator of the concept, but all the fancy new graphics and stuff are by a friend (and now co-founder) named Ryan Laughlin (prettydang.com).
I created the site on a whim one night – I was thinking about the two previous times I had shared a room with my girlfriend and another roommate, and I was mulling over the fair way to do it. I had a notion to include the common spaces in the calculation, and I made a survey and sent it to my friends to test the idea. And then I started thinking about other things – windows, closets, bathrooms… The survey worked out really well, so I turned it into a little web calculator which I sent around to my friends. One of them suggested I send it to a blogger (marginalrevolution), who posted it, and BOOM the next day it was a hit.
The calculator took a few nights analysis and programming, and we got a huge response, which was totally thrilling. So we wanted to do more. The new bill-sharing platform took Ryan (who is a really talented designer/developer) about 6 weeks to create, and we’re still working on it furiously to add new and cooler features! We’re really excited about the upcoming bill-repayment feature, and improving the basic financial features until the import/export and syncing is really slick and the interface is even cleaner. We’re also going to add several more fairness tools and surveys over the summer.
Do you plan on adding social networking or other api’s like Four Square or Facebook to the app?
Definitely looking towards some Facebook integration, but one thing at a time I suppose.
What’s your end goal for the product?
The end goal is to have a really nice, clean platform to share an apartment, which makes sharing rent and bills effortless and painless. You just live together, and the site splits things and takes care of the details and makes it fair without you doing anything. That would be the fantasy. Of course in reality, you usually have to talk about things and input a few simple things, but we want to help make the discussions simpler and less time consuming. Our “mission statement” is to “make shared living easier by providing neutral advice, fair judgement, and simplified expense sharing through our website, SplitTheRent.com.”
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Press Release
For release: April 25th, 2011
Contact: Jonathan Bittner
Founder, SplitTheRent.com
press@splittherent.com
361-248-8637
SplitTheRent announces public beta of free bill-sharing tool
Cambridge, MA – What is the fair way to split the rent on an apartment when bedrooms are
different sizes, or only one room has a private bathroom? What if you live with a couple sharing
a bedroom? SplitTheRent.com is a website which solves these social conundrums and other
room-sharing issues based on principles of applied economics and mathematical analysis of
survey data.
“Sharing an apartment with friends seems like it should be easy, but when you’re collecting
money or trying to negotiate room prices, things can get awkward,” says founder Jonathan
Bittner, an astrophysics graduate student at Harvard.
SplitTheRent made headlines this February with its innovative “rent-splitting calculator” that
takes into account size and quality of bedrooms and divides rent fairly among housemates.
Today, SplitTheRent launches a beta version of a free service that keeps track of who pays
monthly rent and bills, such as electricity or cable bills. Each month, it tells everyone how much
they owe for rent and expenses, and who needs to be paid back. It organizes everything into
one page, so that everyone can see at a glance whether or not the landlord has been paid, who
owes money to whom, and how much each bill was this month.
“The goal of our new tool is to simplify the chore of settling rent each month and to automatically
send reminders,” explains Bittner. “Getting paid back for bills and rent should be simple and our
site helps make it that way.”
SplitTheRent’s mission is to make shared living easier by providing neutral advice, fair
judgement, and simplified expense sharing through its website, SplitTheRent.com.
SplitTheRent now splits bills and expenses as well as rent
The new SplitTheRent (splittherent.com, formerly splittherent.org) homepage lets users create
a free account to store and share expenses with housemates. Expenses can be added via
internet browser or mobile device (on our simplified mobile website).
SplitTheRent’s expense tool spares housewrangling over expenses or burdening one
housemate with the responsibility of managing finances for the group. Automated emails remind
users of payment due dates and eliminate the unpleasant duty of “being the bad guy” who
has to remind housemates when they owe money. The site even confirms with the person
responsible for writing the rent check to make sure that it’s been sent each month.
Innovative new features
SplitTheRent’s expense-sharing tool is innovative and modern. Creating an apartment takes
only seconds. It’s also fully integrated into SplitTheRent’s popular “Rent Calculator.”
Innovative new features include:
- a super-simple interface which makes everything visible on one page – much easier to use
than a spreadsheet.
- a “quick-add” for expenses written in plain English. For instance, entering “Electric Bill 50”
would be understood by the site without additional clicking or entering data in multiple boxes.
- tracking for who writes the rent check and whether or not it has been sent, which saves time
on writing emails back and forth.
Mobile apps, online payment tools, and other exciting features are planned for Summer 2011.
About SplitTheRent
SplitTheRent was founded in February 2011 by Jonathan Bittner, an astrophysics graduate
student at Harvard. The new site is a collaboration between Bittner and Yale Computer Science
student Ryan Laughlin (www.prettydang.com), who has joined SplitTheRent as a design and
technical co-founder for the development of the site. The site will be adding new features and
tools during Summer 2011.
SplitTheRent is the online arbiter for fairness in shared living. It uses surveys of actual people,
as well as expert judgment and mathematical analysis, to find ways to quantify fairness and
give neutral opinions on individual situations. Its web-based calculators have received the
attention of leading applied economists (Freakonomics, Tyler Cowen), consumer advocates
(Consumerist), and web-tool devotees (Lifehacker).
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