About vaadagai.homes
An anonymous, crowd-sourced map of what renters report paying in Chennai - the rents renters pin themselves, not broker quotes. No broker, no paywall - and the map itself needs no login.
Why this exists
Every rental portal in India shows broker-quoted asking prices, and those are almost always inflated. A 1BHK an existing tenant pays ₹18,000 for can be advertised at ₹26,000 to the next renter, and there is no public reference for what a flat actually costs. vaadagai.homes flips that: renters pin what they pay, and each neighbour’s rent becomes the next renter’s reference point. The word vaadagai is Tamil for rent.
How it works
1. Renters share what they pay. Tap the map at your flat’s location and enter the rent, BHK, and a few details. The point joins the public map, rounded to about 100m for privacy. It is anonymous: no signup, no account, and no IP address is ever stored in the clear or shown.
2. Everyone sees the medians. Once an area has enough pins, the map shows the median rent per BHK, with a spread and a confidence level so you can tell a well-sampled number from a thin one. Rents far outside the local range are flagged and held out of the median until reviewed. The methodology page sets out the sample-size floor, confidence levels, and how stale and unusual reports are handled.
3. Owners can list directly. A separate marketplace lets owners post a place to rent or a flatmate request, with no broker and no fee. Posting a listing or requesting a callback takes a quick Google sign-in - it keeps the marketplace tied to real people and cuts spam, while the rent map stays fully anonymous. An owner’s contact is private by default: a seeker who is interested requests a callback, sharing their own number, and the owner reads it from a private link and calls back. Owners may instead choose to show their own number, revealed only to a signed-in seeker who unlocks it. There is no automatic matching and no contact is ever shown on the map.
4. Watch an area. Optionally leave an email to be alerted when a new rent is pinned near a spot you care about. That is the only email the map itself ever asks for.
About the founder
vaadagai.homes is a solo project, built and run by Deepak, a renter in Chennai. He is a Product Builder. He started it after one too many flats where the broker’s quote had nothing to do with what the current tenant actually paid, and there was nowhere to check. He builds this on weekends and after hours.
You can reach out to Deepak on LinkedIn.
Questions, feedback, or a correction? See the contact page.