Ryan Cole is a 2022 University of Otago software engineering graduate, and the creator of Flatchat. He “really enjoyed” his time at Otago, and had some “fun and interesting” flatting experiences – including some more gnarly ones. “That’s where the idea for the site originated from,” he explained to Critic Te Ārohi. He’s been through those situations of trying to find a decent flat, only to end up in the cold. Ryan had taken a paper for his software engineering degree that required coming up with an idea and implementing it, and alongside some of his classmates, they decided to give the concept of Flatchat a shot. It was “attempt number one.”
Since then Ryan has graduated, but always held Flatchat close as a passion project. “I sort of got something going in 2022, but didn’t quite get enough off the ground [...] It never really took off”. That was attempt two. Now Ryan works in mobile development in Australia, and had a little bit more time on his hands to get Flatchat “stable” enough for people to use. If you head over to flatchat.co.nz, you’ll be able to see attempt number three yourself.
He tells Critic that he really hopes Flatchat can help people. Flatchat works by a combination of user-provided information along with public rental listing information. Through all of this publicly available historical data, Ryan has obtained pricing data on over 2300 Dunedin properties with active listings, as well as over 2500 tenant reviews going back to 2014. Flatchat visitors are then able to read and write their own reviews about properties listed. “A lot of the [recent] reviews on there so far have been from friends and family I have bullied into leaving a review about their flat,” he admits. There are very few users on the site thus far, and Ryan has done little so far to promote Flatchat. He says that talking to Critic was the first step. We’re blushing.
So far, the analytics coming out of Flatchat are nothing short of incredible.North Dunedin has an average weekly rent at $661, just $1 cheaper than Roslyn’s average of $662/week. He also knows that it’s one of the worst-rated suburbs for warmth – scoring only 2.36/5 from tenant reviews. “Students pay a premium to freeze,” he says. Māori Hill is the coldest of all at 1.78/5. The ratings come from 2,500+ actual tenant reviews. Each flat listed is rated out of 5 points, which is an aggregated rating based on sub-ratings of value, condition, warmth and the landlord of the property. Pretty damn cool.
