- February 12, 2026
- By Karen Shih ’09
A friend’s text of a promotional flier saved Aadarsh Govada ’27 the last time he was frantically looking for an apartment in College Park. For months, he’d scoured websites and asked acquaintances about their experiences, but “just couldn’t find anything that met my needs” in terms of price and location. With just two months to go before the start of the school year, he finally signed a lease. “I got really lucky,” he said.
Now he’s back on the hunt for his senior year. But this time, he has a new tool that aims to take the stress out of searching.
Kato, a website developed by a team of University of Maryland students and launched in November, gives peers a way to quickly get up-to-date prices for 17 local apartment buildings, compare floor plans and amenities, compare distances to major campus landmarks, and see historic price trends and reviews. The market is significant; about 4,500 students lived off campus throughout College Park in 2025, according to UMD’s National Center for Smart Growth.
“We know looking for off-campus housing can be frustrating. There are so many options because the area is developing so quickly, and prices can be volatile,” said Adam Pouliot ’27. “There was a need for something that updates automatically and aggregates all that information.”
He pitched the idea to fellow students last spring in an entrepreneurship minor class, bringing together Williama Carver ’27, Philana Hin ’27 and Nidhin Gangisetty ’28. They found that while the university offers some resources, including a partnership with Apartments.com, there aren’t ways to easily view all the options. (A few weeks after Kato launched, The Diamondback also released its own apartment finder tool.) They also surveyed students to see what other challenges they faced.
One big sticking point: “Apartments have the tendency to sell a dream that’s not true,” said Gangisetty. “Prices of utilities aren’t accurately represented, maintenance issues aren’t clear, staffing hours aren’t posted. All of those genuinely impact your housing experience.”
Other students hated having to submit their phone numbers and emails just to see prices, only to get inundated with endless sales pitches. They also wanted a more centralized way to find roommates and subletters, instead of posting in a dozen different Facebook groups and chasing down leads. “As college students, this is the first time for a lot of us. People don’t know what the leasing process is,” said Carver.
To address those issues, Kato’s site encourages users to leave detailed reviews with examples of utility costs, features a virtual board to post requests and includes a leasing guide with steps to follow.
Last fall, the Kato team tabled at Terp Marketplace at Van Munching Hall and promoted its platform at Pitch Dingman, where it won $3,000 from the Joan and Chester Luby Idea Track for “Best in Customer Discovery.” That’s led to more than 7,000 users on the site, with more than 300 registered to use popular features like price drop alerts.
Courtesy of Kato
From left, Nidhin Gangisetty ’28, Adam Pouliot ’27, Williama Carver ’27 and Philana Hin ’27 with their Pitch Dingman winner's check.
“A diverse team is necessary to approach such a complex problem,” said Pouliot. The self-proclaimed “data nerd” and economics major who once created elaborate spreadsheets during his own housing searches is behind all the charts and graphs, from price histories for particular units to comparisons with market average. Gangisetty, a computer science major, led the development of the website’s back end. Carver, a real estate development major, incorporated her knowledge of the different players within an apartment complex ecosystem. Neuroscience major Hin, who has an interest in user experience and design as well as AI, worked on the site’s look and feel, as well as built an AI agent to help students more easily navigate its offerings. They credit Dingman-Lamone Center for Entrepreneurship Managing Director Michael Hoffmeyer, who taught their class, for mentoring them.
“We’re hopeful that this platform will not only help our students, but make a bigger impact,” said Hin.
By the fall, the team hopes to expand into other universities along the East Coast. The group is also adding the ability for individual property owners to add listings, since the site currently only includes large-scale apartment complexes. Eventually, the team plans to charge for advanced features, but the current focus is on building a user base and meeting student needs.
As the spring semester starts, Govada is ready to dive back into the housing search for his final year. He’s given feedback as a beta tester and requested a feature to help students figure out the best time to get a good deal on a lease. “I was really dreading the housing search, but this is making it much better,” he said.