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Leading online rental marketplace RentPath switched its identity to Rent. on Tuesday and rolled out new features aimed at helping landlords, property managers and renters.
The company called the changes the “most significant evolution in a nearly 50-year history of serving the rental industry,” as it announced it was changing its name to Rent.
It said the changes were a bid to simplify its brand, which includes Rent.com, Rentals.com and ApartmentGuide.com and offer new solutions to its clients.
“We have been building towards this moment for a long time, and this announcement marks a major step in the evolution of our company, delivering on our vision to enable property management clients to reach renters through every digital channel,” Jon Ziglar, Rent. CEO, said in a statement.
“Not only have we expanded our offerings, we’ve also dramatically improved and built upon our existing products, including a new Rent.com website and mobile app which deliver the fastest experience in the industry to move renters seamlessly through their journey,” he said.
The company offers a package of features for landlords, renters looking for homes to rent and property managers.
RentMarketplace boasts 50 million visitors each month. The company said it upgraded RentMarketplace to include more features for renters to easily find or request more information about a specific property while searching for a place to rent.
Among the upgrades, Rent. is now integrating with Google Business Profiles and a new way to request tours on any listing.
RentEngage offers lead nurturing and renter assistance using call center support and email functionality.
RentRep is an online reputation management tool for interacting with renter reviews, which the company said also helps with SEO. When properties have multiple recent reviews, they attract more leads from potential tenants.
“Property managers can now easily reach those renters by enabling one or more of Rent.’s search, targeting, social, reputation management, or rental engagement products — all of which are powered by Rent.’s proprietary first party data and integrated systems,” the company said.
RentSearch facilitates advertising to drive leads while RentTarget helps to geolocate potential renters. RentSocial helps to find potential renters online through social media advertising, including a new service on Snapchat.
Rent. customers control their preferences through the RentHQ user interface.
National real estate brokerage and search site Redfin acquired RentPath last year, shortly after the Federal Trade Commission blocked a bid by CoStar to pick it up.
Redfin has said it acquired the company as an attempt to build relationships with younger people who may not be ready to buy a home yet. It also helps to drive traffic to Redfin and keep it ranking high on real estate-related web searches.
“Having a full team on staff to manage marketing across web, search, social and email – not to mention answer calls, emails and chats from prospective renters – requires a level of investment and expertise that many companies cannot take on,” Kathy Neumann, Rent.’s chief marketing officer said in the statement. “This is where Rent. comes in, and is especially relevant today as the industry combats high turnover, open positions and limited resources.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated to more accurately describe Redfin.
