Thanks for commenting on this post and thanks for describing how the winner is chosen.

To be honest I did not know what the process was, but I had heard rumors that it went to the top bidder. I was wrong and I apologize if I offended anyone.

In writing the post I figured that many NARPM members would read this and not vote for Rentals.com (yes, I am willing to admit that I spin these blog posts to my favor.)

If I understand what you wrote correctly Rentals.com is not eligible anyway because they have not been a national member for 2 years.

For the past couple of weeks I have been thinking of taking this blog in a very new direction (less about my competitors and more about property managers). So stay tuned I am working on some really good stuff that should be worth a visit.

Dave Dugdale

1. An affiliate must be a national affiliate for at least two years to be eligible.

2. In all years previous to 2005, the board of directors would vote for the affiliate of the year based on the board’s criteria. There were only a handful of national vendors eligible at that time so it usually was alternated between homerentals.net and Promas.

3. Starting in 2005, the NARPM members were sent a survey in which they were asked to vote for affiliate of the year. There were 18 candidates, and my contact at NARPM told me that RentClicks received over 75% of the vote. So this means that we won fair and square based on the members votes in the first year we were eligible.

4. In 2006, the same format was followed, and we won again. I do not know the margin of victory, but the number of eligible companies was more than 50. Many companies believed that if they just copied us and joined NARPM, they could compete with us. So, in our first year we were eligible, and the first year of a democrat vote of NARPM members, we won. In our second year of eligibility, and the second year of the vote, we became the only affiliate in the history of NARPM to win back to back affiliate of the year awards.

Any notion that we “bought” the award is absurd and childish. Maybe revolutionizing the way property managers advertise, and saving them time and money in the process is worthy of this award. Also, we put our money where our mouth was. We greatly appreciated NARPM members business, and in return we wanted to “pony” up for the biggest sponsorship. It’s also noteworthy that when we joined there were 4 or 5 national NARPM affiliate members, now there are over 100. Maybe you should consider the remote possibility that we worked our asses off to gain the business of NARPM members, and that our leadership led to huge growth among their national affiliates. This increase in the number of vendors was worth way more to NARPM than the cost of our “official partnership.” Instead of constantly complaining about the politics at NARPM, which there are plenty, maybe you should shake some of their hands and win their business like we did. Dave

Are you saying that the Official Partner designation officially = ” Vendor of the Year” ? And if so are you getting this from NARPM?

I can see the prices are marked in the show prospectus but where are you seeing that the silver and bronze have been sold?

[Will you be at your booth #1 in Scottsdale so I can meet you?]

On the bright side, since we know something is in the makes, it will continue to drive us all.

Some revolutionary is in the makes though

That is always the story!

Carnac

Great blog. Have enjoyed; and learned a lot.

Just wanted to add that the text messaging feature is great but nothing revolutionary.

Some revolutionary is in the makes though

Dave: For the list of vendors, maybe do it in a way that other sites can use it as a widget on their site to get opinions as well.

Let me know if you need help.

Thanks