Sales Slow? Opportunities in the Rental Market through Real Estate Technology

Sellers are facing tough-times and buyers are cautious in buying, due to blows in the lending industry and high prices of homes in select parts of the country. 

There are thoughts today amongst RE industrialists of opportunites for agents, brokers and assistants to "make moves" in the rental space; to supplement or replace income normally generated during steady or "boom" housing markets.   Jessica Swesey of Inman News hints at the idea towards the tail end of the blog post titled A case of accidental landlording.

Many sellers see renting out their home as a short-term, Plan "B" to selling; given needs to relocate and/or act swiftly with 2 or more looming mortgage payments.  Potential Buyers currently residing in apartments are increasingly inclined to rental homes for their Plan "B" instead buying outright; to put their feet-in-the-water to reside in a single-family residence "until the market becomes more stable" to purchase a home.
 

Real Estate Technology & the Rental Market

As various business models arise (keep your eyes peeled at Inman.com) for agents/brokers and assistants to "make moves" in the rental space (rent-to-own, property mgmt), let it be known that real estate technologies, the marketing and "showmanship" of it's use, run parallel in the rental space, having equal importance to the brokerage of real estate. 

Let's run through a few examples where real estate technology has great similaries with (a) rental vs (b) for-sale properties:

(1) Agent Websites

Many of today's vendors of agent/broker websites have specific listing fields in-place for rental properties.  In addition, instead of "list price" one could utilize "rent-per-month".  Many times, agents can add menu and navigational buttons to their website to list only the "For-Rent", or "For-Lease" properties.  So essentially, the core web presence of an agent currently conducting for-sale business, could venture into the for-rent marketspace and not have to engage a new core website.

(2) Online Classifieds / Syndication of Listings

For those real estate professionals who utilize syndication of their listings to various, online real estate classified websites, they will still have the option to send For-Rent listings.  An agent or an assistant should check with their provider (likely their agent website) to inquire about syndication of "For-Rent" listings.  Also, check with online classified websites themselves to see if they currently showcase "For-Rent" listings.

(3) Virtual / Online Tours

Virtual / Video / Online Tours should absolutely exist for rental properties.  An online walk-thru is equally imperative for a prospective renter as it is to a prospective buyer.  Just as the home is staged for great photos and video, these tours are different.  They are different because they have a longer-shelf.  Turn-over in rental properties have a higher frequency than For-Sale properties.  Once these tours are created, they should not be deleted, rather they should be reused the next time the property is for-rent, which could be as early as 1 year (or simply, the term of the lease) 

(4) Single-Property Websites / Online Flyers.

The 123MapleSt.com's are just as equally important to the marketing of a For-Rent property.  As with online tours, single-property websites should have a long shelf life.  Given property management and solicitation of the property for For-Rent, the URL should be renewed annually, and, if posssible, purchased for multiple years. Again, these single-property websites should not be deleted, as they can be used again when the property is available for rent.

(5) Electronic Forms

As with many electronics forms providers, you can define a transaction as "For Lease" as displayed within ZipFormOnline below.

In addition, real estate professionals serious about entering the "For-Rent" marketplace, should inquire with their forms provider about form libraries (as shown below); forms custom and particular to (a) Rentee documents (the owner renting out their home) and (b) documents for the Renter/Leaser if not already inclusive of their member forms library. 

These are just some examples of how real estate technology that you currently use or administer can be effectively used in the renter marketplace once you find a sound business model to work within that space.