Three college friends who grew tired of paperwork hassles while leasing property to renters
have developed an online site that modernizes the age-old deal between landlords and renters by making it electronic.
The 20-something entrepreneurs working on the fifth floor of a rented Brickyard office in downtown Tempe flipped the switch on their site, RentalSpaceNetwork.com, last week after two years of development.
Asked why someone else hadn’t come up with the idea, Zlotoff said, “You’re right. But think of all the times you have a good idea and never act on it. Surely you’ve thought of things and just figured someone else would do it.”
The partners said they funded their start-up with several hundred thousand dollars from private investors.
But the biggest investment came from the three friends themselves, who spent countless hours researching rental laws across the country, buying domain names from Scottsdale-based Godaddy.com, developing the site’s security features and creating a word-of-mouth marketing plan that rewards anyone who refers business their way.
The site is free to renters but costs landlords $24.99 per month per property, or $199 per year per property. Apartment landlords pay $34.99 a month and $279 a year to advertise their units on the site.
Image via usrentallistings
Steve Hessian on April 26th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Small businesses like this are the future. This is the logical extension of “find a need and fill it” type mentality.
I love it!
Tim on April 26th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Now if only they could make the tenants pay up too! Too often I’ve heard excuses for not paying the rent on time. For some of our true stories, check out our real estate profits and losses series at http://TheMoneyKings.com
In any case, I think this is a good idea, I just think it has markets it’ll work well in (middle and upper class families), and markets that just won’t be able to benefit from it (low income families).
Hugh Barton on April 26th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
“You’re right. But think of all the times you have a good idea and never act on it. Surely you’ve thought of things and just figured someone else would do it.”
Youth can really change the world if they just put their hearts to whatever they wanna do. They just made things easier once again for businessmen like me.
Melanie D. on April 27th, 2008 at 12:00 am
I see future CEOs. I hope these kids come up with more businesses which will not only lessen inconvenience but will also generate new platforms for marketing.
Robert on June 28th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
I post my vacation rental property on Homeaway.com and vrbo.com. The other day I received an inquiry on my Homeaway.com posting, that read as follows:
“Hi, I am inquiring about your rental, my husband and I rented a vacation property near your place last year and had a wonderful time. We want to come back next year, but the gentleman we rented from informed us that he is booked during the time we want to stay. Your place looks very nice and my husband and I would like to possibly reserve it for next year. I just had a few questions. The last gentlemen we reserved from had us sign up on a website called rentalspacenetwork.com and sign an electronic lease. He also had us make our reservation deposit and payment through this site. Do you use this service as well? If not, how would we go about signing an agreement and getting you a reservation deposit? I am a little leery about sending a check in the mail. We are already registered on this website, so it would be very convenient for us…I look forward to hearing from you. Warm Regards, Carol Thomas ”
In subsequent emails, this person attempted to push me toward rentalspacenetwork.com. Here’s the problem: According to this stry, rentalspacenetwork.com wasn’t operational last year. So my question is this: Is this the marketing tactic of rentalspacenetwork.com and its 20something entrepreneurs, or is it the result of its referal incentive? Either way, it makes me very unlikely to ever list on this site.