Top Rental Cities in rentBits

January 5, 2009 – 3:13 pm
rentBits, our free national rental search engine, has been growing in both terms of traffic and listings each month. Using Google's new advanced segments reporting within Google Analytics, we find some interesting data.  Below is a breakout of the top States and Cities rentBits performs the best in:    California   11.91% of all traffic goes to 1 of 480 cities in California Top 10 Cities in California West Hollywood San Francisco Sacramento Los Angeles Fresno Modesto San Diego Milpitas San Jose Santa Clara Average time on Site is 13.76% higher than rest of site Page Views per visit is 7.43% higher than rest of site Texas  7.8% of all traffic goes to 1 of 333 cities in Texas Top 10 Cities in Texas Houston Dallas San Antonio Austin Irving Addison Killeen Carrollton El Paso Grand Prairie Average time on Site is 8.07% higher than rest of site Page Views per visit is 10.68% higher than rest of site Florida 7.4% of all traffic goes to 1 of 219 cities in Florida Top 10 Cities in Florida Orlando Miami Tampa Jacksonville Pompano Beach Hialeah Ft Myers Kissimmee Winter Park Orange Park Average time on ...

Posted in Rental Market | No Comments »

Search-based Keyword Tool for Real Estate

January 4, 2009 – 3:41 pm
Google just released a search-based keyword tool for all categories. It analyzes your URL, or your competitors URL and offers keyword and URL suggestions.Here is an example of how the tool works.Step 1: Enter a URL into the search boxStep 2: View Keywords or Sign in to view allYou can view keywords and the associated URL that are not in your adwords campaign and add them by bulk uploading them. I wish it made it easier to select the the ones you wanted and have them automatically added into your adwords account.If you are running a query on one of your competitors you will not be able to view all keywords. Google currently gives a sample of 100.   This is Google's first step in making advertisements as user friendly and as relevant as Google search results. A keyword advertisement for Phoenix Rentals for example should not go to a home page, (as many ...

Posted in Rental Market | 1 Comment »

Will Trulia be Acquired in 2009?

January 2, 2009 – 2:15 pm
I have been using Twitter a lot lately and recently ran across Twtpoll that allows users to do polls via Twitter.My first poll. Will Trulia be acquired in 2009?Results so far. Please vote your opinion. 

Posted in trulia, tweeter | 1 Comment »

Making the Most of What you Have

December 28, 2008 – 2:35 pm
You don't need a lot of money to be innovative. Take a look at these amazing Wii hacks for example. [youtube]QgKCrGvShZs[/youtube]

Posted in Business Tips | 2 Comments »

Marketing - Be Yourself Dude

December 24, 2008 – 1:40 pm
An opportunist.  Closing in on 1 million views. [youtube]c5j4McFzies[/youtube]

Posted in Business Tips | No Comments »

A Real Estate Twitter Directory

December 13, 2008 – 1:57 pm
 If you are a twitter user you may know the frustration of trying to find and follow people that have your same interests. I ran across a new Twitter directory that helps you find other tweeters who for example like real estate. The service is called JustTweetIt and anyone can enter their tweeter information for free. I recently added mine to the real estate category.  This is one example of how tweeter can become much better.  

Posted in tweeter | No Comments »

Hotpads Adds Twitter Functionality

December 10, 2008 – 4:45 pm
The Hotpads.com team has added a new distribution functionality for real estate properties who want their ads on Twitter.  

Posted in HotPads | 1 Comment »

VCs Throw another $8 Million at Real Estate For Sale Site

December 9, 2008 – 2:55 pm
Roost.com, a real estate search engine of for sale properties, has raised another $8 Million in their second round. This brings the total amount invested in the company to $13.5 Million. Roost.com was released at about the same time as our rental search engine rentBits.com. According to Compete.com, rentBits traffic has been rising and has more unique visitors than Roost.

Posted in RentBits, roost | 1 Comment »

The Best Advertising Banner Ever!

December 8, 2008 – 3:22 pm
Facebook should take note on how well these American Express Advertisements are doing. I have been watching their videos for more than an hour now with the American Express brand in my face.Since I can't seem to find the actual ad on TechCrunch, I will have to describe it to you.The ad was interactive. It was branded American Express and you could view videos from Richard Branson, Seth Godin and others giving entrepreneurs advice on Finance, Marketing, Innovation, Leadership and Management. You would do all this without leaving the TechCrunch page.After doing some research I found that American Express has many more videos on their Open Forum site.  I wish they provided code so I could share that same advertisement on my own blog. The content was so good, they wouldn't even have to pay me. This ad, would then become viral without them having to pay more to advertise.I think Facebook should ...

Posted in Business Tips | No Comments »

The Real Estate Bubble - The TV Commercial that Says it all

November 28, 2008 – 6:02 pm
From PickRent.com: [youtube]7Pzim8O7Fd0[/youtube]

Posted in Real Estate Investing, Real Estate News | 1 Comment »

Top 20 Questions to Ask When Finding a Property Manager

November 28, 2008 – 1:30 pm
We are seeing many rental properties hit the market due to the economy. Some first time real estate investors or 'forced' real estate investors don't want to do the managing of their property themselves and are looking for property managers to help them. Here are the top 20 questions in no particular order to ask when finding a property manager: How many properties to you currently manage? How many of your properties are currently vacant? How do you advertise the rental property? Do you pay for advertising? What is your average days on market? What is the monthly management fee? Do you take any part of the first months rent as a fee? How long have you been in business? How many rental sites do you advertise my listing to? What is the percentage of tenants you have evicted? Do you have any property management certifications? What is your tenant screening process? What is your average email and phone response rate for potential tenants? What is your ...

Posted in property management | 1 Comment »

Weekly Top Rental Scam Post

November 26, 2008 – 10:27 am
The top rental scammer post for rentalscams.org for the last week was Known Rental Scammer - jamesmcannon116@googlemail.com. Within the last week, hundreds of people wanted to learn more about James Cannon. We hope this information helped to stop one more rental scam from getting through.RentalScams.org continues to grow. If you have rental scams, or rental scam information we can publish it on our Rental Scams site.  

Posted in rental scams | 1 Comment »

ForRent.com and Social Media

November 19, 2008 – 5:03 pm
According to Virtue, a site that offers a free tool that measures a brand's online conversations, ForRent.com is leading the multi-housing sector's social share of voice by 66 percent. Over the past year or so, ForRent.com has been active in generating video commercials called Community Theater for communities. These videos are seen on ForRent.com, YouTube, MySpace and other social networks. ForRent says these videos are viewed 17,000 times a day.ForRent is also active in social networking and has Facebook pages as well as over 40 profile pages in 40 markets on MySpace.ForRent developed a press release on the findings. 

Posted in ForRent | No Comments »

LocalMatters Pulls its IPO

November 14, 2008 – 2:56 pm
LocalMatters, a Denver based company that offers technology to businesses in the local market, has pulled their IPO. They originally submitted IPO papers in 2006 and hoped to raise up to $46 million. From their prospectus, they generated $8.4M in revenue in 2005 but had a net loss of $18.5M.  According to filings, the firm is pulling the IPO because of "changed circumstances regarding the securities markets."According to Borrell and Associates, the local online advertising market was around $8.5 billion in 2007 and is expected to reach $12.6 billion this year.

Posted in Rental Market | No Comments »

Oodle Lays of 20% of it Workforce

November 14, 2008 – 2:30 pm
 Oodle, the classifieds search engine has layed off 10 people which represent 20% of its workforce. Oodle has raised $16 million over the last 2 years and has signed some great partnerships including MySpace, Military.com, Wal-Mart and more. 

Posted in Rental Market | 1 Comment »

Apartment Marketer in Las Vegas

November 14, 2008 – 7:14 am
Apartment Marketer, our lead generation platform and advertising network for the apartment industry, will be in Las Vegas next week for the annual Multifamily Pro Brainstorming event. If you are going to be there, please stop by our booth and say hello.

Posted in Apartment Marketer | No Comments »

ForSaleByOwner Now Disributes to Realtor.com

November 14, 2008 – 6:49 am
Realtor.com, the largest real estate search site on the net has never served For Sale By Owner Listings. This week, ForSaleByOwner.com announced they will now be distributing properties to Realtor.com. “The DOJ-NAR settlement benefited consumers by giving them access to Realtor.com without the expensive cost of a commission fee,” said Greg Healy, Vice President of Operations at ForSaleByOwner.com. “We’re proud to be the first to offer this new consumer-friendly access to Realtor.com. In today’s challenging housing market, sellers need cost-saving ways to sell their homes.” ForSaleByOwner.com informs clients that in order for their listings to appear on Realtor.com, they will be contacted by an affiliate broker to help with MLS paperworl and "You must indicate what you are willing to pay a buyer's agent - between 2-3% of the sale price of your home.... Of course, if you sell your home directly to a buyer (without a buyer's agent) you would pay ...

Posted in Rental Market | No Comments »

Rent Marketer now Posts to Rentals.com, RentalHouses.com + 80 Additional Sites

November 12, 2008 – 11:42 am
Rent Marketer, an online rental advertising network, (which owns and operates rentBits.com and ApartmentMarketer) has announced a new partnership with Rentals.com and RentalHouses.com. Rent Marketer will distribute rental listings to Rentals.com, RentalHouses.com and 80 other online rental and classifieds sites.       Rent Marketer works with property managers, real estate investors and real estate agents and posts their properties to many rental sites using proprietary posting technology.  According to Compete.com, the Rent Marketer network reaches over 10.2 million people each month and continues to growing rapidly.The Benefits of Rent Marketer are: Technology Leadership - Proprietary one click advertising solution No Contracts - Each ad runs for 30 days Massive Reach - Post to over 80 different rental and classifieds sites from one place Accountability - Free phone and email tracking 100% Guarantee - No riskRent Marketer launched in 2006 and their management team consists of technologists, real estate investors and Ex-Googlers. To learn more about Rent Marketer go to www.rentmarketer.com.

Posted in Rental Marketing | 2 Comments »

HomeAway Raises $250 Million on a Pre Money Valuation of $1.15 Billion

November 11, 2008 – 10:25 am
HomeAway, the aggregator of vacation rental sites has raised $250 million on a monster $1.15 billion dollar pre money valuation. They previously raised $209 million over two rounds which puts their total raised to $459 million.TechCrunch writes:The pre-money valuation was around $1.15 billion, say a couple of sources, and at least $50 million of the round went off the table to earlier investors. The company was founded in 2005 and has grown primarily through acquisitions: They’ve acquired at least eleven vacation home rental sites, including VRBO, VacationRentals.com, Abritel.fr and OwnersDirect.co.uk....  It’s also clear that the round was seriously overvalued. Ebay was rumored to have mulled over an acquisition earlier this year at $1.5 billion, but it never came through with a firm offer. It’s not clear who else could be a buyer at this valuation. What in the world would HomeAway spend all this money on? They have already acquired most of the top rental ...

Posted in vacation rentals | No Comments »

Rental Advertising Business Models that Work

November 9, 2008 – 6:06 pm
A while ago I did an interview with Dave at RentVine. In this interview I talk about my thoughts on what rental advertising models are used in the rental space and which ones work the best for single family homes and multi-housing.We use the subscription model for RentMarketer.com and the Cost Per Lead model for ApartmentMarketer.com.[youtube]kelGbrJ3ZKg[/youtube] 

Posted in Apartment Marketer, Rental Marketing | No Comments »

RentVine New Rental News Blog

November 3, 2008 – 5:48 pm
Dave Dugdale of RentVine has released a new rental market news blog. Enjoy!

Posted in RentVine | 1 Comment »

Rent.com Releases Cost Per Lead Model

November 2, 2008 – 5:07 pm
Rent.com has released a cost per lead (CPL) model for properties with 49 units or less. How does it work? Properties with 1-49 units pay $15 per phone or email that is received. Properties can set a "lead cap" for the maximum number of leads they want to receive in a 30 day period. For those properties with 50 or more units, they have to use the cost per lease model and pay $389 per lease.

Posted in rental sites | 5 Comments »

Dominium Enterprises Suspends Sale

October 31, 2008 – 12:42 pm
Dominium Enterprises was looking to sell by the end of this year, but the current economic conditions is not going to make the sale happen. Frank Batten Jr., chairman and CEO of Landmark, said in a statement: "The credit crisis has made it virtually impossible for companies to obtain bank commitments to help finance acquisitions. And the recession has reduced revenue and earnings and made it very difficult to value a business."  source

Posted in ForRent | No Comments »

Where is the Bailout Transparancy?

October 22, 2008 – 5:18 pm
Where exactly is our tax payer bailout money going?From the BailoutSleuth.com."The Treasury Department has hired two big accounting firms to help keep tabs on the government's financial-industry rescue program, and once again certain basic elements of the deals are shrouded in secrecy.  That sort of specific detail is lacking in the agreements themselves. The Pricewaterhouse Coopers contract released by the Treasury Department on Tuesday has blacked-out text in the area covering the firm's bid, and also conceals the name of the PricewaterhouseCoopers partner who signed the deal.Another section listing the names of the PricewaterhouseCoopers employees designated to work on the contract also is blacked out. "  

Posted in Business Tips | No Comments »

Zillow Lays off 25% of it Workforce

October 17, 2008 – 4:17 pm
Rich Barton, the CEO of Zillow recently wrote a post entitled "Difficult Times, Difficult Decisions". In it he says:This week we are reducing our workforce by 25%.  This was an incredibly painful decision for me and the leadership team, but, in the end, we concluded that we had no choice but to securely batten down the hatches as we sail into a major economic storm. The unprecedented economic events that are playing out on a global stage began in our own industry and have made a prolonged recession likely, in our judgment.  We are a young company that is not yet making a profit.  Despite having sizeable cash reserves, we deemed the responsible course was to meaningfully reduce expenses, so that Zillow emerges from the other side of the recession in a very strong position, even if the recession lasts many years. ..... Fear, value-shopping, and curiosity are driving people in record volumes ...

Posted in zillow | 1 Comment »

What is Trulia.com Worth?

October 15, 2008 – 6:28 pm
This is a very interesting question since I think Trulia is worth much less today than it was 6 months ago. But, for arguments sake, lets run some numbers on what Trulia could potentially be worth today if someone were to acquire them.(Note: Theses are obviously guesses based on data gathered from multiple sources. Take it with a grain of salt.)How many Employees does Trulia have?According to Trulia, they have 80 employees.How many unique monthly visitors does Trulia have?According to Trulia they have 5,000,000 unique users per month.How many page views per month does Trulia have?According to Trulia they have 40,000,000 page views per month.What is the RPM (Revenue per thousand pageviews) for Trulia?Not every single page is monetized but RPMs can vary by industry. For real estate, RPMs can be anywhere between $2 - $30 RPM. Lets meet halfway and use an RPM of $15.What does all this mean?If Trulia has 80 employees at ...

Posted in trulia | 2 Comments »

Zillow Makes List of 11 Troubled Web Companies

October 14, 2008 – 5:19 pm
CNET recently wrote a post on who they think are the top 11 web companies that may be in trouble considering the current state of the economy. Zillow.com made this list.Zillow The real-estate site's revenue model is advertising. Real estate and bank advertising. Unless the real-estate research site starts charging for foreclosure listings, I don't see it doing too well in a hunkered-down economy, in which people are trying to hold on to their homes for dear life, not upgrade.  Do you think Zillow should be on this list? Do you think other real estate sites should be on this list?  

Posted in zillow | 2 Comments »

VacationRoost.com Launches Vacation Rental Site

October 14, 2008 – 2:31 pm
Vacation rentals are a mutli-billion dollar opportunity. Vacation Roost recently launched to acquire some of this market share. VacationRoost.com has over 100,000 vacation rental properties and was formed by consolidating three vacation rental companies: Mountain Reservations - one of the first vacation rental Web sites that marketed properties exclusively in the Intermountain West; Rooster.com (formerly VR Gateway) – a national vacation rental marketplace; and Mexican Destinations – a supplier of luxury villa rentals in Mexico. Julian Castelli, CEO, was previously the CFO of Primedia and was responsible for the launch and development of rentals.com.VacationRoost has 130 employees and is based out of SLC, Utah. 

Posted in vacation rentals | No Comments »

RedFin Lays off 20% of its Workforce

October 14, 2008 – 9:57 am
"A Very Tough Day" says Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin who yesterday had to lay off 20% of his staff. "Unlike other startups, our industry's recession started a year ago, when home prices first plunged." says Kelman.Kelman's final words in his post "Redfin's whole business will struggle and fight and may yet fail. But the only way it is possible to succeed - and even today, I believe we will - is if we adapt."

Posted in Real Estate News | 2 Comments »

Jobs Being Cut Across the Board

October 13, 2008 – 3:44 pm
Many companies are cutting jobs. Ebay recently let off 10% of its workforce, VC's are telling their portfolio of companies to cut staff and conserve as much cash as possible.Well, not here at Rent Marketer.We are looking to hire in various positions for Rent Marketer and Apartment Marketer.Open positions for Rent MarketerOpen positions for Apartment MarketerIf you are looking for a great place to work email us. We would like to meet you.

Posted in Apartment Marketer, Rent Marketer | 2 Comments »