Stop refreshing Daft.ie. Be first to apply.
Rental Hunter watches for new listings that match exactly what you are looking for, and submits your application within seconds of one going live.
- You set every criterion
- Your message, your words
- Pause any time
The real problem
Good listings do not wait for you to check.
The Irish rental market does not reward the best applicant. It rewards the one who got there first. A listing goes live, the enquiries pile up, and by the time you open the app on your commute you are somewhere near the bottom of a very long list.
So people compensate by refreshing. On the bus, at lunch, in bed. It is exhausting, it never feels like enough, and it still comes down to whether you happened to be looking at your phone in the right minute.
Searching manually
- Listing goes live
- You are at work, asleep, or away from your phone
- You open Daft when you next get a moment
- Dozens of enquiries are already in
- You send yours anyway and hope
Searching with Rental Hunter
Automated- Listing goes live
- Detected
- Checked against your criteria
- Application submittedFirst in queue
- You get a notification telling you it is done
Same listing. Different position in the queue.
How it works
Three steps. Then you can stop watching.
Set your search once
Choose your area on the map or from the city list, set your radius, your price range, bedrooms, bathrooms, property type and anything you want excluded. Write the message you want sent on your behalf, and you are done.
It watches while you get on with your day
Rental Hunter checks for new listings continuously in the background. Nothing runs on your laptop and nothing needs your attention. You can close the tab.
It applies the moment there is a match
When a listing meets every criterion you set, your application goes out within seconds, using your message and your details. You find out from a Telegram notification, and the full record lands in your dashboard.
What changes
Three things stop being your problem.
You are early, without trying
Being first stops depending on when you happened to check. The application goes out while the listing is still new.
You stop carrying the search around
No more refreshing on the bus or checking one last time before bed. The search continues whether or not you are thinking about it.
You only hear about real matches
Nothing goes out unless it meets every criterion you set. No wasted enquiries on places you would have scrolled past.
Inside the dashboard
You can see exactly what it is doing.
The automation is not a black box. Your search status, every listing that was detected, every application that went out and every one that did not, all in one place, with the full listing details and photos captured at the moment of applying.
Always on
Your search does not sleep, so you can.
Rental Hunter runs on its own infrastructure, not on your machine, and it does not stop at the end of the day. Close your laptop, go to a viewing, go to bed. The search keeps cycling through the night, and a listing posted at four in the morning gets your application at four in the morning.
You wake up to a notification telling you it is already done.
Why this works
Speed is the only advantage that is actually available to you.
You cannot control how many people want the same apartment, what the landlord thinks of your job, or how the market is priced. You can control how quickly you get in front of them. That is the one lever a renter genuinely has, and it is the one that is hardest to pull by hand.
Faster reaction
Detection and application happen in the same moment, without you needing to be involved.
Less effort
One setup, then nothing. The repetitive part of the search is simply removed.
Better focus
Your attention goes to viewings and decisions instead of to a refresh button.
Autonomous, but you write the rules.
Rental Hunter only ever does what you configured it to do. You define the area, the price, the property, the exclusions and the exact words of the message. You can change any of it, and you can pause the whole thing, at any time.
- Every filter is yours to set and change
- The application message is written by you
- Pause and resume from your settings whenever you want
- Every action is recorded and visible in your dashboard
Why this exists
Built by someone who lost the same apartments you are losing.
I built Rental Hunter while looking for a place in Ireland. I kept finding listings I would have been genuinely happy with, hours after they went up, with the enquiry count already in the dozens. Not because my application was weak, but because I had been in a meeting when it appeared.
Refreshing harder was not a strategy. So I wrote something that would watch for me and act the second a listing matched what I actually wanted.
It worked, so I turned it into a product for other people searching in the same market. It is built around the way renting in Ireland really works: fast, competitive, and decided long before most applicants ever see the listing.
Riccardo, founder
Honest fit
This is worth it for some people and not for others.
It is a good fit if
- You are searching in a competitive area and keep arriving too late
- You know reasonably well what you want: area, budget, size
- You cannot check listings all day, because you have a job or a life
- You are happy for an application to go out without you approving each one
It is probably not for you if
- You are browsing casually with no particular timeline
- You want to read every listing carefully before enquiring
- You have not decided on an area or a budget yet
- You would rather write a different message for every property
If the second list sounds more like you, the manual search is genuinely the better tool. No hard feelings.
Questions worth asking
What does Rental Hunter actually do?
It monitors new rental listings on Daft.ie against the criteria you set. When a listing matches all of them, it submits your application on your behalf within seconds, then notifies you and records the application in your dashboard.
Is Rental Hunter affiliated with Daft.ie?
No. Rental Hunter is an independent tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or partnered with Daft.ie in any way.
Why does it need my Daft.ie account?
Because the application is genuinely yours. You connect your own Daft.ie account, and the enquiry is sent under your identity, from your account, with your name, phone number and message. Landlords and agents see you, not a third party.
Who writes the message that gets sent?
You do. You write your application message in your settings, and that is exactly what goes out. You can rewrite it at any time and the new version is used from then on. Your name, phone number, number of adults, pet details and move-in date are filled in from what you entered.
How much control do I have over what it applies to?
Complete control. You set your search area on a map pin or from the city list with a radius around it, your price range, minimum and maximum bedrooms and bathrooms, property types, furnished preference, lease length, how soon you need to move in, keywords to include, keywords that disqualify a listing, and agency licence numbers to exclude entirely. If a listing fails any of it, nothing is sent.
Can I pause it?
Yes. There is a pause control in your settings. Your search shows as Active or Paused, and you can switch between the two whenever you like. Pausing stops all activity until you resume. Nothing is lost.
Can I run more than one search at the same time?
Not today. Each account has one active search configuration. If you want to search a different area or budget, you change your criteria and the new search takes effect. Support for multiple simultaneous searches does not exist yet.
How do I know when it has applied for me?
Through Telegram. You connect your own Telegram bot during setup, and Rental Hunter messages you when it applies, so you know a listing went out and can follow up. Every application also appears in your dashboard.
Can it apply to the same listing twice?
No. Each listing is recorded once per account, so a property that has already been applied to is never sent a second enquiry, even if it is re-detected.
What happens if an application does not go through?
It is retried automatically a limited number of times, with a delay between attempts. If it still cannot be completed, the attempt is recorded in your dashboard with the status and the reason, so you can decide whether to follow up yourself.
Can I see what it has done?
Yes. Your dashboard holds the full history: every application with its address, monthly price, status, agency and the date and time it was sent, plus the listing details and photos captured at the moment of applying, and a link back to the original listing.
What happens to my data if I stop using Rental Hunter?
You can delete your account yourself from the dashboard whenever you want. Your search configuration, including your Daft.ie and Telegram credentials, goes with it. Application history is kept for a defined retention period so you have a record while you are still searching, and you can auto-archive older applications out of your main view at any point without deleting anything.
You cannot watch all day. It can.
Set your criteria, write your message, and let the search run. The next time something matches, you will find out because your application has already been sent.
Set up in a few minutes. Pause or change your search whenever you want.