I got a tip that RentalHouses.com is not advertising in the NARPM newsletter in this month’s issue.

Sure enough when I looked I could not find them anywhere except for Robert Massey’s article bio.

Perhaps this is a sign that CSI is going to get rid of RentalHouses soon?

From the latest SEC filing:

“In February of 2007, the Company acquired the assets of RentalHouses.com, for approximately $9,000 in cash. The Company has not yet completed its purchase price allocation and in the interim has classified the intangible assets to goodwill.”

I am not a finance guy, but I am guessing $9k really means $9M. Perhaps building up a user base by giving away unlimited plans for $299 paid off well for the owners of RentalHouses.

I ran across Rob’s blog a couple of weeks ago. At least I think it is Bob’s because no where on the site does he credit himself (you have to look up the WhoIs info). Judging who is on his blogroll I would bet that he is the author.

I don’t normally link to my competitors but here it Rob’s Blog.

I not sure what Rob’s roll is with the CSI company, or if he is still actively working for them. I guess there must be some arrangement since he still holds ownership of the RentalHouses.com domain.

UPDATE: Rob has a nice long post about himself on his blog.

I got tipped off that the RentalHouses leadership page had changed. It appears that the RentalHouses leadership team has been downsized.

Two people appear to have left the company: David Richardson and Robert Machado.

I have always been baffled why RentalHouses had such a large leadership team. Of course I am biased since I do it all myself.

Google has rolled out Personalized Search recently. Basically this means if you have any sort of Google account (GMail, AdWords, Groups, Alerts, etc.), Google will save by default your search history and then start showing you results that are tailored to the sites you visit the most.

What does this mean for the rental ad industry? The way I see it is–the rich get richer.

Take a property manager that has been using RentalHouses for years. She decides she might look around for another site to advertise with and does a search for “xxx rental homes”, where xxx is her city.

Because she has visited RentalHouses hundreds of times before, Google says “She must really like RentalHouses, so lets make RentalHouses #1 for her, even though RentalHouses may not be #1 for anyone else.

A site like mine might never get noticed even if I do make it to #1 in a year or two. This is frustrating.

Does it seem fair that the big rental sites keep getting bigger and bigger? Is Google giving them competitive advantage?

I keep working on my site bit by bit hoping to improve just a little each day. For the first time that I can remember I am actually beating RentalHouses on Google for a city.

Above is from the search “Corvallis Rental Homes” on Google which RentVine is ranking #6 and RentalHouses is ranking #7.

In all fairness RentalHouses kicks my “you-know-what” for all the other cities out there, but I will take this small victory nonetheless! I think I should have a beer to celebrate!

One thing I have not checked yet is to see if Google is personalizing my results to make my site rank higher just for me. I am pretty sure I have personalization turned off. I need to check that pre-beer.

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.”