Rent.com Whitepaper - Maximizing Apartment ROI

July 1, 2009 – 2:56 pm
Rent.com recently released a whitepaper (source: AvalonBay) entitled, "Maximizing Apartment Marketing Return on Investment: How changes in renter behavior are affecting apartment marketing strategies".  I suggest you read the whole thing but below is a summary:  84% of renters think of searching online for an apartment - More than twice the number that think about using print ad in a newspaper or magazine (Click to view chart)    Unaided Awareness of internet sites used to find an apartment Four of the top six sites mentioned were national ILSs, one was a search engine and one was a classified site. None were apartment marketing / corporate sites. (Click to view chart) How Renters Search for Apartments 80% of Internet Queries related to "apartments" or "for rent" are three to six words long   The graph below, with data from Hitwise for Jan 2009, shows the relative volume of traffic for all variations of apartment and rental-related keywords broken down by the number of keywords ...

Posted in rent.com | No Comments »

Excellent Apartment Discussions via Twitter

June 19, 2009 – 3:48 pm
Twitter can be used as a wonderful learning tool if you participate in the right # (Hashtag Groups). For example, Lisa Trosien (@lisatrosien) puts on an Apartment Forum every Friday with the Hashtag #AptChat.She starts off the discussion with a question.For Example:and then leads to other questions.If you are interested in this discussion, you can search #AptChat in Twitter and comment or view responses from others interested in the same thing.This is a great way to learn more about the industry, receive tips and advice and offer your opinions.

Posted in Rental Market | 4 Comments »

Google Books Releases Embed Feature - Trump Real Estate 101

June 18, 2009 – 2:17 pm
Google recently released a feature in Google Books that allows anyone to embed books into their website or blog. The move will dramatically increase distribution for the books on Google and will allow publishers to sell more. Example below:

Posted in Real Estate Investing | No Comments »

Apartments.com Study - 90% of Renters Search Across Multiple Sites

June 15, 2009 – 1:46 pm
Earlier this year, Apartments.com conducted a national survey to more than 1,600 renters on their 2009 moving plans. One of the findings of this survey showed that about 90% of renters surveyed said they will search multiple apartment websites for their next apartment.The online rental industry will continue to become more fragmented. For advertisers, it is becoming more and more important to reach these renters that are searching across hundreds of sites. However, with more sites on the market, advertisers are starting to feel major pain.Some of these pain points are: Time: (The amount of time it takes to post a listing on 2 or 3 sites is significant enough. With fragmentation, multiple that by a hundred) Errors: (With repetitive manual posting increases the chances of inputting the wrong data) Site Cost: (The more paid sites properties are on, the more the cost.) Company Cost: (It is expensive to pay someone to post listings and make ...

Posted in Real Estate News, Rental Market | 1 Comment »

rentBits Traffic up over 300% for Last 12 Months

June 14, 2009 – 12:01 pm
Compete.com says rentBits.com traffic has increased over 300% for the last 12 months. Last month, compete estimated rentBits unique visits to be around 166,000. Our internal numbers show our unique visitors are closer to 300,000 per month.

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Win a Free Ticket to the NAA Conference in Vegas

June 10, 2009 – 4:46 pm
RentWiki is offering a free ticket to the NAA conference in Las Vegas. The winner of the Social Media Challenge will recieve a free ticket and the second place winner will receive 50% off. The tickets are going for $925 as of today. Go take the social media challenge, it is actually quite fun.

Posted in RentWiki | 1 Comment »

LevelOne Study - Social Media Does Not Work for Rental Leads

June 3, 2009 – 12:34 pm
LevelOne recently did a study on the impact of social media and lead generation for the rental space. Methodology:LevelOne reviewed all properties within their data base that had a unique email and toll free number applied to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Guest Cards appointed to these sources were compared to all other sources for those same properties. Here is what they found: Conclusion, social media, as it relates to generating rental leads, converts at about .05%. In order for social media to be on par with other lead generating sources, they have to grow by a factor of 40 before it has the same impact as the weakest ad source. That means Facebook would have to grow to over 10 billion monthly users.  More users than are currently on planet Earth. 

Posted in RentBits, Rental Marketing | 4 Comments »

How Many Rental Leads are Generated During Non-Business Hours?

May 19, 2009 – 12:05 pm
At Rent Marketer, we collect a massive amount of data that helps us improve the efficiency of online rental advertising. One piece of data we recently collected was total leads that are generated after business hours? During our research, we found that 32.79% of phone and email leads come after the normal 8 - 5 business hours.  The graph is below:  There is also a correlation between the amount of time it takes to get back to a potential resident and filling vacancies. In fact, a recent MIT study shows that the odds of contacting a lead in 5 minutes vs 30 minutes drops by a factor of 100. The longer you wait to return a call or email, the less likely you are to get in contact with that potential resident.The take-aways from this data are: You may be missing out on as much as 32% of the leads that occur after normal ...

Posted in Rental Marketing | 2 Comments »

MyNewPlace Rolls out Mobile Apartment Search

May 6, 2009 – 3:44 pm
MyNewPlace recently rolled out apartment search for all mobile phones. The UI allows for: Complete search functionality of properties based on location and amenities Multimedia listing information with pricing, detailed descriptions and photos Mapped property locations Click-to-call functionality, allowing users to call a leasing office without dialing a number"Up until now searching for an apartment meant being stuck in front of the computer," said Mark Moran VP of Marketing at MyNewPlace. "Now with MyNewPlace for Mobile, consumers have all of the information they need to find a new apartment right in the palm of their hand." I believe that the future of mobile applications will be web based. As it exists today, most web applications are downloaded to the phone. As is the case with applications for the iPhone, Gphone, etc. As mobile browsers become more robust, we will begin seeing many applications being used on the phone that do not need to be downloaded. MyNewPlace ...

Posted in MyNewPlace | 11 Comments »

Zillow Real Estate Report - Not out of Woods Yet!

May 6, 2009 – 12:13 pm
Spencer Rascoff, the COO of Zillow was just on Fox Business News giving an overview of the real estate market. (link to video ). Here are some of the low lights: 1 in 5 American homeowners are underwater on their mortgage (20.4 million homes) In 2006 and 2007 the median down payment for a home was around 5% Americans lost about $700 billion in home values in 1st quarter alone The L-Shaped Recovery 4 million homes for sale right now 20 million more homes may come on market soon (as home values appreciate) 1/3 of Americans will try to sell home within next 12 months if they see a recovery More demand will bring much more demand 20% of all home sales are now foreclosures 10% are short sales

Posted in zillow | No Comments »

Zillow Becomes the #1 Real Estate App on the iPhone

May 5, 2009 – 5:39 pm
Zillow launched the iPhone app on April 28th, and according to Spencer Racoff, Zillow's COO, now has over 40,000 downloads. This makes the Zillow app the fast growing Real Estate iPhone app in history. [youtube]rJfrdcbfXsc[/youtube]

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Kevin Thompson of Avalon Bay - The Call Center Solution

April 28, 2009 – 11:28 am
 Kevin Thompson, the VP of Marketing at Avalon Bay, wrote a terrific piece on the benefits of call centers entitled, "Is that a Lease on the Line."With the overwhelming amount of leads being generated online with sites like Rent.com, ApartmentMarketer.com, ForRent.com, MyNewPlace.com, Apartments.com, and others, Kevin outlines the importance of using call centers to increase leases. Below is a summary of the article.     By year end, estimated that 18 of the top 31 markets for the multi-family industry will not be at a "supply and demand" balance     Cities that will experience high vacancy rates   Austin, Charlotte, Houston, Tampa Bay     Industry has a mediocre lead-to-traffic (appointment) conversion rate of 5-15%     85-90% of the nations 25,000 communities have yet to ...

Posted in Apartment Marketer | No Comments »

Apartment Marketer Participating at the AIM Conference

April 26, 2009 – 10:23 am
Our sister site, Apartment Marketer, an apartment marketing platform for the multi-family industry will be participating at the AIM conference next week in Denver, Co. The AIM (Apartment Internet Marketing) Conference has consistently been one of the top marketing conferences for marketing executives in the Multi-Family industry. 2009 AGENDA HIGHLIGHTSAIM 2009 features Intermediate and Advanced tracks to help you target your interest and expertise level: How to use local content to drive more traffic Crisis communications with residents during a disaster Three different owner perspectives on using social media Integrating the art of marketing with the discipline of revenue management Making marketing accountable for driving NOI Harvard psychologist Sharon Melnick on managing your inner voice for success under stress Nuances of online marketing to Spanish-speakers Paying per click for advertising: A real estate expert presents best practices Come early to learn to use Facebook, Twitter and more in the pre-conference sessions And Much More…VIEW THE FULL AGENDA 

Posted in Apartment Marketer | 1 Comment »

Zillow Finds Traditional Brand Advertisers

April 25, 2009 – 3:45 pm
Zillow has been experimenting with large brand advertisers by providing them with branded real estate within the Zillow discussion forums.  Currently, Propel Water is advertising within these sections.  Zillow is currently receiving about 8.5 million unique vistors per month and continues to grow at a rapid pace. 

Posted in zillow | 1 Comment »

How to Unmask Rental Scammers

April 13, 2009 – 2:33 pm
Dave Dugdale of PickRent put together a video on how to detect and unmask rental scammers. The scammer tool can be found here.[youtube]PM7pJhUfOgA[/youtube]

Posted in rental scams | 3 Comments »

Lake Front Real Estate Search Made Simple

April 7, 2009 – 2:51 pm
Many of my friends ask me how they can find lake front property. Unfortunately, there are not many sites out there that offer this type of functionality.However, a new site called LakeFrog is designed to just offer lake front properties thoughout the United States.  The site covers over 5,000 lakes in the US and is free to search and post.The site is super clean and easy to use. They recently added data of the top listings by lake and average lake front home prices in specific areas. As the housing market continues to improve, we are going to see more and more vacation and second homes being purchased and entering the market. LakeFrog is in a great position to take advantage of this.

Posted in Uncategorized, vacation rentals | 2 Comments »

Do you Twitter? Try Flutter

April 7, 2009 – 12:36 pm
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Apartments.com Commercial - Ryan Gesell

April 5, 2009 – 9:11 pm
An old High School friend, Ryan Gessell, was recently the star of an Apartments.com commercial. Ryan is one of the most creative, hardest working and most talented actors I know.  If you are doing a movie or commercial, give him a call. 

Posted in Apartment Marketer | 2 Comments »

How to Get Your Start-Up Mentioned in TechCrunch

April 3, 2009 – 4:14 pm
TechCrunch is the most popular start-up blog on earth. A simple mention of your product or service can increase your traffic dramatically over night. Recently, rentBits was mentioned in TechCrunch and since the post, our traffic is up over 25%. A question I have been asked is, "how did you get written up in TechCrunch." Below are 5 tips to help your start-up get mentioned. Develop a great product or service Why is your product different? What problem does it solve? Tell a Story Provide a frame of reference i.e The Zillow For Rentals Get their attention The editors of TechCrunch receive many emails a day. They should know exacly what your service or product does by reading the first two sentences of your email. Help them get to know you Add your company to CrunchBase Got technology news? Send them tips with a link to your blog post. We got two links to our blog from this and this ...

Posted in RentBits | 2 Comments »

rentBits.com Releases Free Average Rental Rates for Over 4,000 Cities in the US

March 18, 2009 – 10:36 pm
The number one feedback we have received from renters, property managers and investors is to offer a tool that shows average rental rates by type and bedroom. With that said, we are very excited to announce a new service that offers free rental rates and stats for over 4,000 cities in the US. Below is the press release that will go out tomorrow morning. Please let us know your thoughts on this new tool.rentBits.com, a free national rental search engine, today announced the launch of its free rental rates page for over 4,000 cities in the United States. Using data from over 7,000,000 rental houses, condos and apartments, the service gives renters, property managers and leasing agents key information on average rental rates in their city.The new rental rates page for each city offers: Free access to current and historical rental ratesAn easy to view graph of historical rental ratesThe current average and median rental ratesRates broken out ...

Posted in Rental Prices | 1 Comment »

RentVine Launches Free Rental Site PickRent

March 15, 2009 – 5:32 pm
 Dave Dugdale, the owner of RentVine.com, has launched a new free rental site called PickRent. Dave said it took about 180 hours to create and he hopes to monetize it through advertising and upgraded premier ads. Rent Marketer listings will be integrated into PickRent shortly.

Posted in RentVine | 1 Comment »

RentWiki Integrates Local Conversation with Twitter

March 12, 2009 – 11:17 am
RentWiki has integrated real time conversations around renting and neighborhoods from Twitter.From the Twitter feeds, renters can listen in on local conversations, ask locals for advice and get information on the surronding area. RentWiki also gives users the ability to broadcast to 8+ million people asking for feedback and advice.“Once a place to start conversations, Twitter has quickly evolved into a market research tool, a wholesaler of goods, a search engine, a news site, and even a rental search,” said Eric Wu, co-founder of RentWiki.com. “The goal of RentWiki is to give people searching for a place to live real advice from renters living in that area. By integrating with Twitter, we are expanding the conversation beyond just our site and into the real-time social web.”    RentWiki.com is known for its access to neighborhood reviews posted by past and current residents and its ability to enable communities to form between renters.  This ...

Posted in RentWiki | 1 Comment »

Kijiji to Change Name to eBay Classifieds

February 27, 2009 – 7:07 pm
Kijiji, the classifieds site that is owned by eBay, will be changing their name to eBay Classifieds. In an email received today, eBay has decided to change the name because it "just seemed like a good idea."I think this is a great move since Kijiji is so hard to spell and pronounce. They are testing this change in the San Antonio market and then most likely will be rolling this out to the remaining markets. The email is below:  Dear Kijiji San Antonio user,Starting in early March, Kijiji San Antonio is going to be trying out a new name, "eBay Classifieds San Antonio." We here at Kijiji thought it made a lot of sense to start using the eBay brand name. After all, we are part of the eBay family and we are a classifieds site...so "eBay Classifieds" just seemed like a good idea. Of course, we're very curious to ...

Posted in kijiji | 3 Comments »

FaceBook Connect and Google Friend Connect

February 27, 2009 – 2:00 pm
I just wrote a new post on the Rent Marketer Blog about MyNewPlace rolling out their integration with Facebook Connect. You can read it here. On this blog, we are also experimenting with Google Friend Connect. You can take a look at the right hand side of this blog and see the "Ask a Rental Question".  This is powered by Google. We are testing it so please let us know your thoughts.

Posted in RentBits | No Comments »

The Rocky Mountain News to Close Shop on Friday

February 26, 2009 – 3:35 pm
The Rocky Mountain News will publish its last edition this Friday. This, on the heals of the San Francisco Chronicle announcing they will most likely have to close shop as well.Last year I wrote a post entitled RIP - 1457 - 2015 (Traditonal Newspapers). Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Within the next year or two, we are going to see many more papers follow a similar fate.What will save the papers? I strongly believe the newspaper, as we know of it today, will be completly obsolete within 10 years. The content will be created by journalists, bloggers, twitterers, youtubers, iPhoners and the like. Everything will be consumed and published electronically.  Content will be sent to you instantly and will 100% be focused on your personal needs, wants and desires. This personalization of news and information, will bring your community and the rest of the World even closer together.In order for papers to embrace this, ...

Posted in newspapers | 1 Comment »

The Long Tail of the Stimulas Package

February 25, 2009 – 10:53 am
Even the Stimulas package has a long tail.    

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4 Reasons Why Rental and Occupancy Rates are Down

February 24, 2009 – 1:27 pm
I just got back from a short trip to California, spending time with my family at Disney Land. My parents told me they are currently looking for investment property in Simi Valley and have put 3 bids on pre-foreclosed and foreclosed homes. Each time, their bid was beaten by multiple bidders.The good news, savvy real estate investors, bidding blindly, are a true representation of market price equilibrium. The true value of a product or service is what a person is willing to pay for it. This is the same principle behind Google Adwords, the market dictates what the price per click should be.Could this be the bottom of pricing declines in markets that have seen tremendous depreciation in home values?With the increase in investors acquiring properties, we are also seeing a decrease in rental and occupancy rates across the nation. Why might this be? In short, supply is greater than demand.In economics, when ...

Posted in Rental Market, Rental Prices | 3 Comments »

ActiveRain to Start Charging for Access to Consumers

February 16, 2009 – 3:37 pm
ActiveRain, the very popular real estate social network, has decided to charge a monthly membership fee for all new members looking to reach consumers. This membership fee will be $29 per month and will give real estate professionals the ability to connect with consumers.All previous ActiveRain members will continue to have the service for free. For new members that do not want to pay, they can sign up for the free service where they are limited to only connecting with other real estate professionals.There are currently over 135,000 members that have signed up for ActiveRain. In November of 2007, ActiveRain received $2.75 Million in funding from HouseValues.com which gave ActiveRain a post money valuation of about $8.5 million, or $100 per registered user. If the same metrics were used today, Active Rain could be valued at about $13.5 Million.The Active Rain community has built the platform from the ground up. With each member, the community ...

Posted in Active Rain | 3 Comments »

Trulia, Sub Domains and The Washington Post

February 11, 2009 – 7:20 pm
Trulia recently announced a deal with The Washington Post where Trulia will power their real estate section. In many cases, Trulia uses a sub domain to power a particular site. For example, the real estate section of American Towns, is powerd by Trulia. Trulia simply replicates the header and footer of a particular site and serves their property listings. (i.e americantowns.trulia.com). A sub domain is a different web address for the same domain. A few examples are mail.google.com, denver.craigslist.com, etc. Compete.com tracks domain and sub domain traffic. Below is a list of the top 17 Compete.com sub domains for Trulia.com.The top trulia partners according to this list are:AmericanTowns.com (7.1% of AmericanTowns traffic visited the real estate section)TampaBay.com (.5% of TambaBay traffic visited the real estate section) - Newspaper Site Zidaho.com (9.6% of Zidaho traffic visited the real estate section) The Washington Post deal should help increase Trulia traffic. But by how much?According to Compete.com, total monthly unique ...

Posted in trulia | 1 Comment »

Timu Sports - The ActiveRain for Sports?

February 10, 2009 – 12:50 pm
Matt Heaton, the co-founder of ActiveRain, an online community for real estate professionals, left the company in August of 2008 to start a new venture call Timu Sports. The site is anticipated to launch early this year. Could this be the ActiveRain for Sport Fans?

Posted in Active Rain | 1 Comment »