I found an interesting topic over at a real estate forum and got permission to quote from the post:

“Rentalhouses.com has been a great place to advertise, I can list unlimited homes and apartments for about $299/month. They just got bought out by a larger company, starting in 2008, I will be charged between $49-$69 per listing!! That means if I have 20 or so units for rent, I am paying almost 1k a month in advertising these properties. That is ridiculous.”

I asked the person who wrote the post if RentalHouses was going to honor a 1 year commitment to him for unlimited pricing and he replied back that they will.

I made an assumption in earlier posts that RentalHouses had done away with unlimited pricing, so I thought it would be good of me to correct that assumption.

Looks like my guess of 2.5 Million was wrong, from reading this article from Courier Journal:

“Terms were not disclosed, but the price was “substantially more” than the $3.22 million the company has raised from investors, said David T. Richardson, president and chief executive.”

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought RentalHouses went through two rounds of funding at 3 million each?

Update: I received an email from Bill Wolfe from the Courier-Journal and he added the following:

“According to the company, it was $3.22 million total from the beginning: $220,000 in “common stock” followed by $1.5 million A Round in 2004 and $1.5 million B Round in 2006.”

From the BizJournal article today:

“Site traffic also has been on the rise. In June 2006 - peak season for rental property - RentalHouses.com had 531,000 unique visitors, up from 227,000 the same month the year before.”

For last month (January 07) I had over 97,000 unique visitors which is not peak season. Granted that RentalHouses is kicking my you-know-what in traffic. But for one guy working part time up against 35+ people at RentalHouses I think I am doing OK.

On the above graph you will notice that it appears that RentalHouses in red has leveled off in 2006 where RentVine in blue is on the upward trend.

Do you think it is possible that one guy with no funding up against a much larger company that has been backed with millions of dollars can pass them in traffic in the next 2 years?

From The Estate News web site:

“But he did confirm that Consumer Source will retain the RentalHouses.com name and its Louisville offices, located at 950 Breckinridge Lane. The local operation will function as a sales center for Consumer Source, which has offered positions to all 30 RentalHouses.com employees.”

It sounded like president and CEO will remain with the company through February to oversee the transition.

I was tipped off this evening that RentalHouses (from what I understand they are now owned by Primedia) has changed their pricing structure. I went to their pricing page and sure enough they have eliminated the unlimited pricing tier for non-vacation rentals.

I was correct in my predication that this would happen. I am two for two with my predictions this year. I think the clear reason why Primedia bought the #2 site was to get rid of the pesky unlimited plan that was probably eating away at RentClicks’ user base.

I wish I had some accurate ComScore data to watch in the next few months - because it would be interesting to see RentalHouses traffic tilt downward. While RentalHouses rankings in the search engines will remain strong, I’m guessing the change in pricing structure will bring traffic down a bit.

So the big question is where do large property managers (100 plus listings) go to “bulk-advertise”? Do they go to another site with less traffic, or do they find other ways to advertise? I don’t have an answer for this. It will be very interesting to see what happens.

When it comes down to it there are really no other rental sites that offer unlimited pricing with traffic at this level. Yes, I could offer an unlimited package to capture some of the exiting RentalHouses crowd, but I honesty do not have the traffic yet to pull that off.

But RentalHomesPlus just might have the traffic to do this. Forget the $299 pricing, RentalHomesPlus could make it $799 a month and perhaps get away with it. RentalHomesPlus has the sales force and the contacts already in place. My bet is on them to offer a bulk-price avenue for large property managers.

It will be exciting to see what happens in the next few months.

The rumor mill has been busy the past few days with the speculation that Primedia has purchased RentalHouses or a deal is under way.

One way to watch this happen is to study this page: http://whois.domaintools.com/rentalhouses.com

If you see the Registrant info change from “RentalHouses” to “Consumer Source Interactive” then you can be pretty sure that it this has happened. They might not change this information right away like they did with the HomeRentalAds site because I reported on the change.

I can see my referrals picking up to this blog the past few days with keywords like “RentalHouses Bought”. Sounds like people are sensing that something is going to happen.

Update: Rumor has it that Primedia might be on a buying spree, they could be on a land grab for increased distribution.

[tags]rentalhouses, primedia[/tags]

So there has been rumors that RentalHouses has been looking for a buyer. So I started thinking what might happen if Primedia purchases them (I have no inside information on this, I just like to ask what if questions). My question is what would happen to the current pricing model ($39) that is out there and how would that change?

#1 RentClicks which is owned by Primedia appears to have a very strict pricing model that does not provide any discounts while #2 RentalHouses does provide major discounts for high quantity home listings. If Primedia purchases RentalHouses my guess is they would merge the two sites and phase out the unlimited pricing model that RentalHouses offers.

Talking with large property managers I know a lot of them really like the all-you-can-eat unlimited plans. If this happens and the number #1 and #2 home rental sites offer only strict pricing I am guessing that Primedia’s shareholders will be pretty happy. But the big question is will large property managers shell out $39 for each listing or go somewhere else?

If you are wondering about RentVine, I am on the fence whether or not to offer an unlimited pricing model. My site is pretty young and does not have the traffic volume they have, so I am not worrying about that right now.

[tags]rentalhouses, rentclicks, pricing[/tags]