Agents flock to rent.com.au

Australian renters are calling for respect and more bang for their buck when it comes to rental increases and the ability to make their rental a ‘home’ on the eve of an Australian rental book

Rent.com.au, Australia’s number one rental property portal, has doubled in size in the past four months with numbers of real estate offices using the site rising from 2000 to over 4000 in a sure sign that agencies wanting to build their rental businesses in view of a slowing property sales market are looking to rent.com.au to do it.

The site today has over 4000 real estate agents from throughout the country, with about 30,000 rental property listings at any time. “We now have 50-60% of all agent rental listings in the country,” says rent.com.au CEO Mark Woschnak.

“The vertical solution we provide is compelling. There is now a clear and obvious place where renters can find their next rental property quickly and easily with a huge selection of properties from both agents and landlords. Rent.com.au is different because the typical demographic and lifestyle needs of a person renting is very different to that of sales portals which focus on marketing to homebuyers, who are at different ages and have different needs,” says Mark.

The growth follows an ‘Are You Being Held to Ransom’ marketing campaign directed at real estate agents and offering them free rental listings and a paid subscription option. Mark puts the uptake of both down to real estate agencies readying themselves for what he is calling the Era of Property Management.

“Real estate agencies are gearing up now for more growth in investment property and for better property management solutions. Property management was once seen as the poor second cousin of the real estate agency, it was always largely about the sales and the commissions that were driven from sales.

“While the better agencies have been building their rent roles as they have grown, it’s now becoming mainstream practice for a growing number of agencies to see their rent rolls as a sustainable, profitable key to the long-term success of their agency, which has never been truer than in the current market. Property management is no longer the poor second cousin, it is now a separate and distinct operating centre within a real estate agency, managed by professionally trained and educated property managers.

While rent.com.au offers agencies free rental listings (with a back-end system in place to enable the upload of property listings direct from internal agencies’ systems, so there is no double handling), they also offer a subscription service whereby agencies can receive more benefits of local area branding, advertising and property management enquires from private landlords. With a fragmented investor property market now being centralised at rent.com.au, and a desire to build rent roles, this is lucrative for agents.

“We have also had excellent take up by private landlords, who make up almost 50% of all rental property listings. Rent.com.au targets property investors enabling them with a professional choice of advertising their property themselves or to get quotes from professional property managers to manage it. This concept of allowing all participants within an industry to be active on one site is seen operating successfully in other verticals, such as carsales.com.au,” says Mark.

If landlords choose not to fully manage their own advertising process, they can fill out a form on rent.com.au with the date their property is becoming vacant and their contact details, and that one form will go to registered agents and property managers on rent.com.au in their area. “This means property managers and real estate agents are receiving enquiries direct from landlords who want to use their property management services. This allows agents to immediately respond and contact landlords with their quotes and ability to win that business,” says Mark.

“What used to be a long-winded process of ringing agents, and even harder if your property was interstate, has been made simple and professional for landlords, who get the ability to choose the best agent for them from a number of agencies. Conversely, the agents highly value this opportunity because they are now receiving genuine property management leads to their inbox.”

Mark says the biggest opportunity right now for all businesses, in particular real estate agents, is to get as much online distribution as they can for free, and to pay for the additional services that are effective and targeted getting them connected directly to their customer. “Rent.com.au gives exactly that opportunity for agents, providing immediate and direct access to people wanting to rent property and landlords requiring their property to be managed,” he adds.