Apartments.com Study – 90% of Renters Search Across Multiple Sites

Earlier this year, Apartments.com conducted a national survey to more than 1,600 renters on their 2009 moving plans. One of the findings of this survey showed that about 90% of renters surveyed said they will search multiple apartment websites for their next apartment.

The online rental industry will continue to become more fragmented. For advertisers, it is becoming more and more important to reach these renters that are searching across hundreds of sites. However, with more sites on the market, advertisers are starting to feel major pain.

Some of these pain points are:

1. Time: (The amount of time it takes to post a listing on 2 or 3 sites is significant enough. With fragmentation, multiple that by a hundred)
2. Errors: (With repetitive manual posting increases the chances of inputting the wrong data)
3. Site Cost: (The more paid sites properties are on, the more the cost.)
4. Company Cost: (It is expensive to pay someone to post listings and make changes across many sites)
5. Updates: (Pricing for apartments units can change weekly or daily, updates are impossible if doing it manually)
6. Tracking: (How many leads can a network generate)

The solution for advertisers are sites like our own Apartment Marketer. These distribution or syndication type services help solve the major pain points for advertisers looking to get more exposure and leads for their listings while decreasing cost and headaches of manually entering data.

Best Practices for Community Listings

The communities that perform the best on rental websites typically have the following features:

• Great photos, especially the primary/intro photo.
• Regularly updated prices for their available units.
• Frequently updated move-in specials or incentives.

Implementing these 3 basic principles will help attract the highest amount of new prospective residents to your community.