Dong and Pavlov found that time and time again after finally locating a promising listing online they would see “call for availability” written in its description. Naturally, contacting the landlord of e
very potential rental candidate, which often involved frustrating days of phone-tag, was inefficient and quickly became frustrating. The pair saw a market in creating a service that compiled available rental properties into a single fast and easy to explore website. (Image courtesy of: TheRentables.com)“I know what I'm looking for, you either have it or you don't, so let's not make it any more difficult” was the guiding principal under which the pair worked. This mentality yielded a
website where users simply enter a city and state into a search box and available rental locations within the area are displayed. TheRentables.com credits Google’s search technology as the inspiration for this simple search concept, which eliminates the complicated search-by-feature forms that many real estate websites use.
TheRentables.com further benefits from Google’s technology by including a Google Maps Street View window in every listing. Street View offers a way for users to test the claims made in rental listings. For example, a user can take a virtual walk around her potential new home to see if there actually is a bus stop on the corner and verify that the post office really is within walking distance. In this way, users can prescreen rental candidates without having to visit a single location in person.
Now, less than a year after the website’s creation, TheRentables.com lists about 34,000 rental properties. While searching the TheRentables.com is free and basic listings on the site are free, the company plans to monetize their service by charging for premium listings, which will receive increased visibility on the website, and by offering an off-line software for use by landlords managing multiple rental properties.
Representatives from TheRentables.com have traveled to various colleges stressing the convenience of their service to seniors who will soon be looking for their first place and other students looking to live off campus. TheRentables.com is also looking to partner with other real-estate websites to offer even more listings on their website.
TheRentables.com was definitely not a first mover
in its industry. Many people have been using Craigslist or other online services to search for rental properties for years. But, anyone who has used Craigslist knows that, while is works, its interface sometimes makes you feel as if you are using a website from 1992. And those of you who have used other online rental websites will know all too well the pain of filling in lengthy search forms up-front only to find that the site has no listings that match your criteria. (Image courtesy of: Craigslist.com)By launching its service in 2009, TheRentables.com was able to learn from the shortcomings of other online rental search services and take full advantage of the potential of Google’s free technology. Founders Dong and Pavlov knew these benefits would drive the success of TheRentables.com in a market that other less-determined entrepreneurs might have viewed as already saturated.
This success is a good reminder that sometimes it’s not necessary to create an entirely new way of doing things, but simply to improve upon an existing method. It is often more realistic to view progress as a string of several key improvements by several people than a collection of massive jumps forward by a few geniuses.
For more information visit: http://therentables.com/
