RentSpree and Realtor.com have agreed to work together on a rental syndication partnership. This ups the total of industry websites using RentSpree listing data to nine and the potential consumer reach to 30 million.
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RentSpree and Realtor.com have agreed to work together on a rental syndication partnership, Inman learned in an exclusive press release. This ups the total of industry websites using RentSpree listing data to nine and the potential consumer reach to 30 million.
The company shared with Inman that the deal will feature RentSpree’s “homegrown” listings for available apartments stemming from in its many property management agreements, which include the ability to advertise vacant units.
“Unlike for-sale listings, rentals still suffer from a lack of efficient tools, resulting in hours of wasted time,” said RentSpree CEO Michael Lucarelli in a statement. “Streamlined marketing is the next evolution of empowering agents to truly work effectively with rentals. The faster an agent can close a rental, the better the return on investment.”
In addition to Realtor.com, RentSpree users can market vacancies on Redfin, Rent, Zumper and ApartmentGuide, among others.
The company said that available units can be added via a single, consumer-inspired interface and lead router, “enabling agents and property owners to market and monitor their rental properties across multiple high-traffic platforms with ease, at no cost,” according to the statement.
RentSpree’s software supports a wide range of multifamily industry business activity, ranging from credit bureau reporting for on-time payments to automated lease administration and tenant screening. It’s worked with multiple listing services for years to promote its features and encourage sales agents to serve renters, who are “tomorrow’s buyers.”
RentSpree has more than 300 associations and MLSs in its partner network that primarily use its ApplyLink solution, a single browser experience that automates application collection, screening, approval and other property management operations critical to securing occupancy.
In August, the company rolled out an income verification system. The fintech feature, the result of an integration with Finicity, a Mastercard company, links to the individual’s bank account to record transactions over the past 12 to 24 months to pull data directly from the source, a practice that’s been manual, paper-based and dependent on credit agencies since its inception. Applicants often scan or provide actual copies of paystubs and rely on reference phone calls to employers.
RentSpree’s Realtor.com partnership is coinciding with a national housing trend that indicates apartments are going to remain a deliberate, long-term option for Americans, even if they are financially able to purchase.
A June 2024 report by Redfin found that renters were more likely to stay put in 2022 than they were a decade earlier in 2012.
Among renters surveyed, 16.6 percent had been in their homes for over 10 years during 2022, according to the report, up from 13.9 percent of renters a decade ago in 2012. Another 16.4 percent stayed in their home for five to nine years, up from 14 percent a year earlier.
The report attributes the increase in tenant tenure to a number of factors, chiefly the steep rise in home prices, with the median United States home sale price more than doubling since 2012 and rising more than 40 percent since 2019 alone, alongside elevated mortgage rates.