Top 49 Rental Sites for Month of Dec - The Long Tail Appears
January 12, 2009 – 3:38 pm
What is the long tail?
The long tail states that, in a market with high freedom of choice, i.e (music online), the block busters i.e (Brittany Spears) can be outsold by the many smaller niche products.
As it relates to rental sites and rental search, the long tail is becoming even more visible. The fragmentation of the online rental space and lower barriers to entry have enabled literally thousands of rental and classifieds sites to enter the market.
Below is a sample of 49 rental sites ordered by their Compete.com traffic for the month of Dec, 2008.
Site Name
rent.com
apartments.com
forrent.com
mynewplace.com
rentals.com
apartmentguide.com
rentalhomesplus.com
rentalhouses.com
house.info
sublet.com
hotpads.com
thatrentalsite.com
nationalrelocation.com
rentalads.com
westsiderentals.com
forleasebyowner.com
everyaptmapped.com
rentbits.com
rentvine.com
4rentinla.com
forrentbyowner.com
byownermls.com
frbo.com
rentdigs.com
citycribs.com
allthelistings.com
tenantplus.com
findmyroof.com
househitz.com
tenant.com
nationalmultilist.com
apartmenttag.com
rentnice.com
usmetros.com
tosublet.com
usrentallistings.com
findhomerentals.com
choiceofhomes.com
whybuy.com
123rentahome.com
studentrent.com
rentwiki.com
need2lease.com
homes4rent.com
houselist.com
apartmentfrog.com
studentads.com
thisproperty.com
getarent.com
As you can see, with data on just 49 rental sites, the long tail is beginning to appear.
The top site out of 49 yields about 21% of the market share. The top 3 rental sites, yield a total of about 48% market share. As you add more smaller sites to this list, the market share of the top sites begins to decrease. Eventually, the top rental sites will make up less than 20% of total market share across the web.
11 Responses to “Top 49 Rental Sites for Month of Dec - The Long Tail Appears”
Hi Dan,
Interesting data of traffic in our space. Wondering how Craigslist changes that data. With specifically rental sites, do you think it is a results of the long tail in search terms from consumers? Are you seeing a long tail in other industries, such as hotels, flights, cars, etc?
Hope all is well!
-Eric
By Eric Wu on Jan 13, 2009
Hi Eric,
It is hard to tell with the CL or other classifieds data. There is google base, oodle, olx, kijiji, backpage and others that also drive leads and traffic.
Absolutely, the long tail in rental search queries picks up a lot of these sites. For example, search for “3 bedroom house for rent in phoenix” in Google.
At Google, we saw the long tail in virtually every industry. It is big in Real Estate, Hotels, Flights, Cars, Music, and many other verticals.
Take care,
Dan
By Dan Daugherty on Jan 13, 2009
Hi Dan
Pretty fascinating, even more so that there are that many rental sites, and that the smaller sites have customers. Why would a management company use a smaller site as opposed to one of the larger sites?
By Eric Brown on Jan 15, 2009
Hi Eric,
I think a lot of that depends on the market. There are some really small sites that perform really well in specific markets.
By Dan Daugherty on Jan 15, 2009
To add to what Dan said,
Some of the smaller sites even beat out the competition in terms of traffic in particular markets.
I do it almost every month :)
By Robbie on Jan 16, 2009
Good one..even more so that there are that many rental sites, and that the smaller sites have customers.
————-
sanjeppu
http://www.talkinghomeloans.com
By sanjeppu on Jan 22, 2009
If I may amplify Eric\’s comment, it\’s obvious that there\’s a tradeoff in time and energy and payoff. here. Why use one of the smaller sites? Because it may work in your market.
The marketer\’s question though is how to harness all of them at the same time. How can I syndicate my information into all of these places and get the \"intellectual property\" value of my data and leverage it as many places as possible.
Obviously RentMarketer sells one of the leading syndication services around. And Dan could far more eloquently that I discuss all of the value of wide distribution of data. But to Eric\’s question, it\’s simply one more way to start conversations and engagement with people who want to find a home in the media they already know. 20-25% of total search volume is on YouTube, not a text search engine.
We\’ll be discussing data syndication and the Long Tail at the Apartment Internet Marketing conference in Denver April 29 - May 1. aimconf.com. It\’s for owners and managers of rentals only, so it\’s a great peer group. Hope to see you there.
By Steve Lefkovits on Mar 4, 2009
FINALLY! Someone is going to have a site for HOMES - NOT APARTMENTS, OR so I thought. Do you realize what a drag it is to search through all those thousands of apartments looking for a house??? Everyone wants to jump on the apartment bandwagon.
Why do you think your site is going to be so much better than all the other apartments for rent sites??
By Sara Stone on Mar 25, 2009
It’s funny that nobody mentions housesforrent.ws and rentspeed.com which are the biggest free sites out there at least I think. How on earth could they possibly be ignored from the list? On purpose?
By Hanza on Apr 8, 2009
Some of the smaller sites even beat out the competition in terms of traffic in particular markets.
By property Turkey on Apr 22, 2009
Smaller sites are just able to connect with their “local” customers. Getting the ball started as far as getting properties is always the challenge. Once you have the ads the renters will come I believe.
By Chris on May 5, 2009