Dal alumni create new matchmaking app for student housing

A new app aims to solve the housing-search woes of Atlantic Canadian university students by connecting potential roommates through a dating-app-style matchmaking system. 

To join the app SubSwap, users have to sign up with their official student email from an Atlantic Canadian university, then answer a series of questions about themselves and their ideal roommate. The app then takes your responses to match you with potential roommates. To match, both profiles must swipe yes on each other. It also has an option to find subleases.

The app was created by Faris Mohamed and Abdelrahman Talaat, who graduated from Dalhousie University in 2025 and Mohammad Said, who graduated from Saint Mary’s University in 2024.

“For student housing, it’s usually a gamble, and it’s usually a long process, longer than it should take,” says Mohamed. “We just hope we create a safe ecosystem for students to find their right roommate, find their place and find their people.”

The app was released in April and currently has around 100 registered users. The SubSwap team hopes to keep the number growing and wants to expand to the rest of Canada in the future.

Talaat and Mohamed created the front-end interface of the app with AI, while Said developed the back end and algorithm. 

SubSwap currently only lets email-verified students find other students, but hopes to add the ability for landlords to post properties as well — but first, the developers need to find a way to verify landlords for safety. 

Mitchell Archibald, the executive director of Student Housing Nova Scotia, says an app like SubSwap is a good option to have for finding student housing. 

Student Housing Nova Scotia is a non-profit that advocates for student housing issues and rents properties to students in the Annapolis Valley.

Archibald recently met with the SubSwap founders and says the non-profit is discussing adding their app as a resource on their website alongside official university resources.

“I love that these students have come together and done this,” he says. “I certainly think it’s an innovative idea; I’m excited to see how it continues to grow as more students use it.”

May Menzel, a third-year microbiology student and member of the Residence Life Team, believes an app like this could help with problems she’s witnessed among roommates.

“The biggest problem we see [in residence] with roommate squabbles is roommates staying up at different times and people having different cleanliness levels,” says Menzel. 

“I definitely feel like [SubSwap] would help out.”