I will go out on a limb and make a few predictions for 2007. Disclaimer: These are only guesses on my part. I do not have any inside info on my competitors, just forming guesses based on information that is publicly available.

• I think we will see RentalHouses take over the number one spot from RentClicks in terms of traffic in 2007. Not rental listings, but traffic. I monitor my competitors on 4 free metric sites in terms of traffic and then I average them out. The graphs I am looking at show RentClicks dropping and RentalHouses holding their own. At the current rate RentClicks will drop below RentalHouses towards the end of 2007.
• HomeRentalAds has already lost the #2 spot to RentalHouses this year and I predict that Homerentalads will continue to fall a few more spots.
• One to look out for is RentalHomesPlus. By my calculations they are currently holding the #4 spot in terms of traffic. Their site is “young” like mine but I hear they have a good team working hard getting traffic. I predict they will move up one spot this year to #3.
• The new Rentals com beta site will move up in the rankings but will not be a contender in 2007.
• Currently RentVine holds the #6 position in terms of traffic. I predict RentVine will move up to the #4 spot. I have been working very hard at this and have many new ideas to boost traffic in 2007.
• One of my competitors will outbid RentClicks from their high level sponsorship (”Official Partner”) with NARPM and will secure that oh so precious link from the home page of NARPM.
• I predict property managers will voice their disapproval of all the new banner ads that have been placed all over the rental sites this year. While these will not go away I predict they will tone them down a bit.
• Prices? What will happen to standard pricing for placing an ad? I predict they won’t budge for 2007. However, watch out for sites like findhomerentals com which appear to be gaining traffic. Prices won’t drop in 2007, but I will predict prices will drop in 2 or 3 years because a free site will invade one of the top 3 spots in terms of traffic and listings. I think the large 30+ sales force used by the current top two sites will start to decrease as the free sites start to gain market share.
• Look for more consolation in 2007. I will guess that Primedia will purchase yet another rental site this year.

So here is what I think the order will look like at the end of next year:

1. Rentalhouses
2. RentClicks
3. RentalHomesPlus
4. RentVine.com
5. HomeRentalAds

I know that traffic is not everything in this business but it does play a large role.

I do not have the money to subscribe to the $35k yearly fee for more accurate numbers from Comscore or HitWise but I am guessing that my numbers are pretty close. If anyone has access to those traffic numbers and wants to correct anything said here - please share!

What are your thoughts for traffic in 2007? Who will win with the most traffic?

[tags]traffic, home rental sites, predictions, hitwise, comscore[/tags]

Oodle.com has a neat service which provides you with the average monthly rent for studios, 1 bedroom, 2 bedrooms, and 3 bedrooms.

” The Oodle Price Distribution graph provides real-time inventory and price information.”

My guess is that Oodle.com holds the largest number of rentals than any other site so this pricing information is probably pretty accurate.

If you are not familiar with the Oodle site, Oodle is what I would call a scraper site. They basically scrape other sites like my main competitors and then place the rentals on their site.

So if you are trying to find out if you priced your rental in the same ball park as others in your city, you can try out this free service.

If you do try it your city, let me know if you think it is pretty accurate.

[tags]Oodle.com, average rental[/tags]

I am happy to announce the official launch of RadioVine which aired it’s first major podcast today!

To listen go to the RadioVine Podcast page where you can listen in each week as I interview different property managers around the United States.

Today’s show is an interview with Wendy Frenzel. Wendy is an owner of A Vantage Properties located in southeast Denver Colorado. I thought the show went pretty well and we covered a lot of interesting topics.

Let me know of suggestions you might have that will make the show better. I am still new to podcasting, and I am looking for ways to improve the show. Let me know what subjects you want to hear about and the people you would like me to interview.

You can sign up for email alerts to know when a new podcast has aired. I am going to try really hard to have one guest on each week. I have my next guest actually coming on the show this Friday. My next guest is Dan Daugherty of RentMarketer.com which I am sure will make for a real interesting show.

If you want to appear on my show please send me an email, I would love to have you on the show.

Here is a radical idea. Create a truly accurate way to measure a web site’s performance so property managers can accurately assess which online rental ad site will provide them the most traffic to their property ads.

Alexa is a free way to measure a site’s performance currently. If you have never tried it, go to Alexa.com and then enter your site to find your ranking among all the other sites on the web. You want to have a low number.

For instance RentVine.com’s ranking currently is 146,695 on Alexa.

The problem with Alexa is that it can be gamed way too easily. The results on Alexa can be artificially inflated by automated means. I am not saying that my competitor’s are doing this, I am just saying you really can’t trust the ranking. To be fair, a site ranking 10,000 or less on Alexa I believe is pretty accurate. Only one of my competitors has rankings below this level, which is RentClicks.com.

What I propose is a non profit .org type site that will aggregate all of the classified site’s stats similar how Google Analytics’s does. The site could be called something like ClassifiedStats.org. It would use Java Script code that reports back to the to ClassifiedStats.org each time a page is loaded.

Site’s like RentVine.com could then display a badge on the site indicating a stat which would be pulled from ClassifiedStats.org such as monthly unique visitors.

I think this would be a useful service for property managers if each one of my competitors would also included a badge on their site as well. The question is would my competitors be willing to join in?

You might think an Opt-In program like this would not be used by smaller sites like RentVine.com because they would not want people to know how much behind they are from the competition. But I would participate, because I think that property managers would appreciate my honesty. And if my smaller site is climbing in the rankings, I think property managers would notice that by looking at a graph on the ClassifiedStats.org site showing an upward trend.

I have no idea who would create the ClassifiedStats.org site (perhaps a company like Craigslist.org could). I have no idea how it would be implemented, as well as which stat would be used for the badge (I am sure there would be much debate on this issue).

This radical idea came from Jason Calacanis keynote speech at the SES conference in Chicago on Tuesday.

I believe a site like ClassifiedStats.org will be created in the next few years. I think the demand for it is here today.

What are your thoughts, do you think that this would be a valuable feature for sites like RentVine?

[tags]Alexa, Jason Calacanis, stats, property managers[/tags]

I just got back from a search engine conference in Vegas called “PubCon”. I thought I would share at least one item I took away from the conference.

Many property managers are missing out on free top placement on Google and Yahoo for local results.

Take a look at the screen shot below from Google when looking for “Kiowa, CO property management“. Notice that it only has 2 results (up to three results are allowed). If you are a property manager in this town you can slip right in to the local results just by filling out a quick form on Google. Once you fill out the form you will get a post card from Google with instructions to complete the process - pretty painless for a top placement.

I am not sure how the Sprinkler Guy got in there, I kind of doubt that he does property management.
[tags]PubCon 2006, WebmasterWorld, Vegas, property management[/tags]

If you own and maintain your own property management or real estate web site - then you are a webmaster.

I got my first cell phone earlier this year. I spoke with several of my friends that work in the cell phone industry before I got one. I was told the phone to own was the Treo 650P. So I went down to Costco and picked one up for a bout $320 (after rebates). Since then I have come to use just about everything on the phone and I thought I would share my experiences.

The reason I titled this post “The smartphone for webmasters” is because it seems that everyone in my industry is using one. This became clear at the SES conference in San Jose. I am sure most of you have been to a conference where you see a line of computers set up to allow people access to their email, well at this conference I notice those lines where extremely short. I noticed that after each session was over a lot of people took out there smart phones and checked their email. Most of the smart phones appeared to be the Treo.

So why do webmaster love the Treo?

• Email: I use my Treo for email far more than I do making phone calls. You can check your email just about anywhere. I have Sprint service which seems to have very good data and (EVDO) coverage.
• MP3 player: I use the built in MP3 player a lot because I listen to many different podcasts during the week. I purchased a 1 Gig SD card for $39 so I can add a lot more songs and podcasts to my phone.
• Internet: I use this a lot more now that I upgraded to the Treo 700p with the EVDO package the allows for faster download speeds. I surf my Bloglines page often to get alerted when someone on my blog list has posted.
• Phone: Now with the Treo 700 I can be checking email on my phone and receive a phone call at the same time - before with the 650 the phone call would have gone to voice mail.
• Contacts: Since I can sync all my contacts on my phone from Outlook 2003 I have all my information with me.
• Camera: When I am out with my kids I can always take a photo that I might have missed before. The 700 has a 1.2 mega pixel camera which is a lot better than the 650’s camera. Using the external SD card I can quickly transfer my pictures and MP3’s using my portable card reader. The Treo also has a video camera, but it is not that good.
• Voice memos: If I am out hiking and I think of an idea, I can quickly say it in to my Treo to play it back later. This can be less geeky than it sounds because people won’t look at you funny because you are talking into a phone. I also use this feature to record conference sessions. When I lower the sample rate (using the free SoundRec program) I fit an entire conference (many hours) on my phone.
• SprintTV: This is pretty cool. You can watch live streaming shows like ABC news on your phone. The video quality sucks, but the audio is pretty good.
• Calendar: Just like my contacts I get reminded when I need to do something.
• Calculator: I don’t uses this that often, but it is nice to have.
• Word, Excel and Power Point: Another item I don’t use much, but it is nice to have.

For my business being able to check email just about anywhere is extremely helpful. Now when I go on vacation or a conference I don’t even bring my laptop anymore. Typing a long email on the phone can be a pain, so if you are out of town and need to respond to a ton of emails you can bring a long a portable keyboard that folds up really small. The other downside of bring a laptop and tapping in to Wi-Fi is that you are not as secure as you are are on the EVDO network. Free Wi-Fi can threaten your passwords and other information you are passing over the air.

When I bought my Treo at Costco they gave me some free extras like a leather case, car charger and ear buds. But the best part of the deal is I could return my phone for a full refund. So what I did was purchase a used 700p on Craigslist for $299 and then returned my Treo 650 and got $320 back so I actually came out ahead. But the downside is when you make even the smallest of change on your plan your 2 year agreement starts all over again.

I have not receive my first bill since I switched over to the 700 but I am guessing it will be around $60 a month which includes the $15 for the EVDO package.

[tags]smartphone, Treo, 650, 700, webmasters[/tags]

As we discussed in previous blog posts we have been working on a free mapping tool intended for property managers and real estate professionals.

We are happy to announce the launch of mapVine! An easy way to showcase your properties on your site with a good looking map.

mapVine allows a web site owner to quickly create a map using Googleâ„¢ Maps technology for their web site with little or no programming knowledge.

How does it work? This three minute demonstration video shows how to map three properties quickly. (a) Select the metro area where your properties are located, (b) input your properties within the system, and then (c) simply copy the code provided into your web site where you want the map to appear.

You can optionally customize your map by (a) choosing the type of map you wish to display as your default (street, hybrid or satellite), and (b) choosing the map size (small or large). You can also set the default map center and zoom for any location within the United States.

While mapVine was originally designed for property managers and real estate agents it can also be used for other industries that require property mapping for their sites, such as a chain of local coffee shops.

Check out an example of a property management site using the mapVine interface: A Vantage Properties (Denver)

To signup for a free mapVine account visit:
http://www.rentvine.com/map/

Please let us know if you have any comments or suggestions on how we can improve mapVine. One suggestion we have received is providing a choice between Google Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth (Birds Eye View), we are considering this in our next release of mapVine.

You can see the mapVine press release here.

[tags]Property mapping, mashup, property-management, real estate, Real Estate Management, brokers, Google-Maps, maps, web design, marketing, Microsoft Virtual Earth, Web2.0[/tags]

My next step in building my interactive property mapping tool is to figure out which mapping vendor to use.

Google Maps: I am already familiar with Google Maps because I am using them on RentVine’s ad listings. I have had pretty good luck with Google Maps so far. The only down side is that Google cookies that get pulled into with the map create a negative (red warning) that some cookies are blocked. This may cause some mistrust for those adding the block of code to their site.

Yahoo! Maps: I am also familiar with Yahoo! Maps because I am also using it for RentVine to GeoCode (take a street address and turn it into coordinates). The downside to using Yahoo! Maps is that it uses Flash. Don’t get me wrong, I love Flash when it is right for the application, but for maps it loads a bit too slow compared to Google and Microsoft Virtual Earth. Seeing a preloader come up when the page is loading is not what the masses what to see - people want their info now and not watching a fancy preloader. Also from what I have read Yahoo Maps is far behind Microsoft and Google in terms of satellite images.

Microsoft Virtual Earth: While it appears that Microsoft is late to the mapping game, they have actually been sitting quietly in the background with Terraserver for many years. So to see the speed at which they have mapped the world should be no surprise. If anything, Virtual Earth appears to be the best suited for the real estate industry because it includes the Birds Eye View images which creates a big Wow Factor for many in that industry. But the problem for me is that I have no experience with this API. Also on the downside is that if I get more than 5,000 map movements a day then I will have to start paying to use their API, which for my free tool that I am developing would be a big bummer.

So let me put the question to property managers and real estate agents, which do you prefer?

I thought it would be fun to document the process of creating the free interactive property mapping tool I am developing because friends of mine ask me how I go about developing certain web applications.

I always start with a sketch of the entire application first including all the pages involved. The page shown above is the core of the mapping tool where a person using the tool enters their properties in one at a time. I then took this sketch to people I respect in the industry and asked for their input, because the original sketch is what I think property managers and real estate agents might like. But my ideas are sometimes not what other people want.

I like to sketch the paper prototype up in pencil first, that way people are more willing to give honest recommendations if they feel it is ok to mark it up.

The sketch above shows what your site would look like after you have added the code we provide to have the map pull into your site.

I find that spending a lot of time on the sketches really helps save time in the long run, because I hate having to go back and recode something because I didn’t think it through enough.

The next step is sketching out the database tables that will hold the information. Then you have to look at each sketch and ask yourself how someone might screw the system up, try and think of everything that they could do wrong and have a solution for it.

I like surf my sketches in my mind and think of all the paths a visitor can take - this will bring up many questions that you will need to answer. I also like to draft out the folder and file name structure, I have come to appreciate well labeled file names. That is what I am working on now.

If you have any suggestions for this tool please let me know so I can get them included as we start coding this free tool up.

We are working on a free property mapping tool that gives property companies (rental property managers, real estate agents etc.) an easy way display all their properties on a single map located on their site without knowing any complicated web site coding. Interactive maps seem to be everywhere on the web now, it just seems natural to provide one for property web sites. I did some checking out there and there appears to be several paid mapping tools and one free one. The free one I found however does not appear to be that easy to use.

Of course the advantage of having a map like this on your site is a way for your visitors to easily see the relationship of where each property is in relation to the other.

We are creating this tool for the smaller property companies that might have just a few properties to about 50 properties that they want to display. It might work for more than 50 (maybe 100) but I am a little considered about how long it might take for the full map to load.

We are still in the earlier stages of development for this tool so we would like to put the idea out there in the hope that readers like yourself can help shape this tool with your comments into something you will find of value.

How will it work? Basically you will create an account and log in. From there will be able to add one property at a time including its address, a photo, price to rent or buy, a caption for the photo, number of beds and baths, and a link.

After you add the first property you will see it appear on the map, when you click or hover over the dot on the map you will see its information including a small photo of the property. Then you add the next property and so on.

The link is for more information on the property, so if you have a page on your site built for that property you can link to it from the map. If you have a property listed on RentVine you could also link to that as well. The important thing to remember is you do not have to pay for a listing to use this free tool (we would love you to but it is not required).

Once you have all your properties listed you then copy a block of code and place it on your site where ever you want the map to be displayed. Then every time that your page loads the map with all your properties will display.

Please let us know your comments either below or just send us an email.

We have heard from some of our users that sometimes the map displayed on your ads does not display the correct location. While this does not appear to happen all that often, it can be frustrating to show your property in the wrong location.

Normally when the map is way off it is because our system can not locate the address properly. When it can’t find an address let’s say in a brand new subdivision it will locate the property in the geo center of town.

We have added a new feature to turn off the map on the rare occasion when the map is not accurate.

continue reading "New feature added: turn map off"

Yes, we have all heard that a pictures is worth a 1,000 words but it can also dramatically increase the traffic to your rental ad.

We have found at RentVine for the past 3 months that the average ad which has photos receives 4 times the traffic as ads that do not have photos.

continue reading "Posting tip: Photos increase traffic by 4 times"