Understanding The Needs Of Prospective Tenants

Housing quality can impact quality of life factors such as physical health and fnances. However, prospective tenants lack critical information about things like utility costs and landlord quality. Our contribution is a series of three studies exploring the complexities of the information economy around rental housing, including information available to landlords but not tenants, as well as information tenants may not prioritize until after lease signing about their own desires. Our frst mixed methods study demonstrates that tenants cannot easily predict factors impacting the quality of life when selecting a rental and need better information about rental housing and the overall rental system. Using speed dating, we explore scenarios premised on information sharing and quality of life to analyze risks and rewards of crowdsourced information collection and sharing within a multi-stakeholder peer-to-peer rental search system. Finally, we present eDigs, a rental search system we have deployed to enhance the information economy for prospective tenants using a combination of opinion, implicit observation, and communal information. We also explore user responses to the system.