Bill Quirk is Moving on from Rentals.com

Yes, you read the headline correctly….I am moving on from Rentals and August 1 will be my last day. It hasn’t been an easy decision for me, but I’ve accepted a position with another classified listing website that I’ve always admired, Monster.com.

When I first came to work for RentClicks back in early 2005, it was a big change from the enterprise software sales position that I previously held. But working for a .com was something that always intrigued me and it felt like it would be a good fit for me. And at the time I thought that at the very least, working for an up and coming .com would be a good way for me to build up my resume so that at some point I could go work for a top 50 website. Last month, Monster was ranked by Comscore as the 38th most visited U.S. website with over 21 million unique visitors so that thought has definitely come full circle.

And while I feel that this is the right move for my career, it’s still very tough for me to walk away from Rentals.com. It’s been a lot of fun to be part of this company as it’s evolved and to be able to play the roles that I’ve played (sales rep, team builder, leader, mentor, shoulder to cry on:) blogger, etc). And I’m definitely going to miss the friendships that I’ve developed within the company (I’m on LinkedIn and FaceBook for those that want to stay connected!). But all of the signs point to this being the right move for me and I’m excited about this new opportunity.

As for this blog, I’d be happy to entertain any offers that might come in for it….2,000 visits per month per Compete has got to be worth something right? But seriously I’ll probably just leave it up as a historical record of one of my contributions to the industry. And who knows, maybe some day I’ll come back to the rental industry and dust this blog off. Although with the speed that social is evolving, blogs may have gone the way of the dinosaurs by then! But for now, the Contact Bill page has been updated and with that I’ll sign off.

Robert Turnbull & Other Familiar Names Leading RentWiki

While writing my last entry about the 5 most popular posts on this blog, I noticed in the search engine terms that were bringing people to my site that Robert Turnbull’s name appeared quite a bit. So I thought an entry about what Robert has been up to since leaving Rentals.com was in order for those who are curious as to where he is now.

In April, Dan Daugherty over at RentBits wrote about RentWiki launching in Beta and commented that with its funding and model that it might be a site to keep an eye on. You can also add highly experienced and talented leadership to the things that RentWiki.com has going for it. As detailed on this page on AboutUs.org, Robert Turnbull has assumed the role of President of RentWiki and is joined there by two other former Consumer Source executives, Jamie Gallo and Jonathan Ford.

As demonstrated by sites such as FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the newly launched GlassDoor, social is definitely the place to be right now. And I would agree with Dan that RentWiki is a site to keep an eye on as this highly experienced team applies social 2.0 concepts to the multi-family rental industry.

Top 5 Most Popular Posts of All-Time on This Blog

WordPress provides some interesting reporting in regards to the number of people who visit your blog, what search engine terms led them to your pages, and which posts have been the most popular. While reviewing the top posts section, there were 5 that by a mile had seen the most activity. So here they are for anyone interested in knowing what people find most interesting on this blog:

#5 – Robert Turnbull Moves on from Rentals.com – the news itself was of course interesting, but I think this post received some extra traffic due to false rumors about one of our offices closing.

#4 – Best and Worst Places to Buy an Investment Home – am especially glad to see this post getting a lot of activity as it means the investors out there are definitely looking for opportunities in this market.

#3 – Telemarketing Call I Received from AlwaysOnVacation.com – my guess is the call center in India is still bothering people. Or maybe others out there enjoy the scene from Boiler Room as much as I do.

#2 – Effect of “Shadow Market” on Multi-family Rentals – Many people arrive on my blog after searching for things like “what is a shadow market” and hopefully that post helps them with that.

and the #1 post of all time is – WhoIs Zilpy and Who Built Zilpy – searches for Zilpy, Zilpy.com and other similar terms completely dominate the search engine terms that bring traffic to my blog. But I think the post and the following comments provide some interesting background for anyone interested in the Zilpy story.

Vacancy Rate in Phoenix for Single Family Rental Homes

Getting vacancy rate info in the multi-family rental industry is relatively easy, but for the rental industry that focuses on properties that aren’t multi-family it can be a challenge. So, I’m always keeping my eye out for useful data about the vacancy rates for single-family homes, condos, and other stand-alone rentals in my markets and came across some interesting data regarding Phoenix.

One of our best clients there, Bennett Property Management, manages over 2,000 units throughout the Phoenix MSA. For anyone who is looking for a residential property manager in the Phoenix area, I would highly recommend them. With such a large and diverse inventory, I would venture a guess that their properties are pretty representative of the market.

Yesterday, I was on their website and noticed a newsletter section in which they published this information:

Bennett Property Management Vacancy News

Nov 07 – Central Locations – 10.1% Fringe areas – 13.7%

Dec 07 – Central Locations – 9.5% Fringe areas – 14.8%

Jan 08 – Central Locations – 4.6% Fringe areas – 14.8%

Apr 08 – Central Locations – 5.2% Fringe areas – 8.7%

So in 6 months, the vacancy rate in the central locations has fallen from 10.1% to 5.2% and in the fringe areas it’s fallen from 13.7% to 8.7%. Now, one thing that I know has changed in this time period is that Bennett began advertising 100% of their listings on Rentals.com whereas in the past they didn’t always have their full inventory on our site. So, I think it’s fair to claim at least a little bit of credit for the drops in their vacancy rates.

However, I think a portion of the story can also be explained by the effects of the foreclosure crisis on the market there. Existing tenants not moving, renters not being able to buy, an increase in the tenant pool, etc.

For investors looking for the best places to buy rental homes though, Phoenix continues to appear to be an interesting opportunity. Home values have fallen back in excess of 20% and there still may be more declines. But with the continued growth of the Phoenix MSA thanks to baby-boomers and others relocating to the area I would expect to start seeing some stabilization soon. And with this apparent decline in the rental vacancy rates, there appears to be a good opportunity to buy under-valued homes and then rent them out to the increased tenant pool.

New Domains Such as .rentals & .jobs on the Horizon

Yesterday, the board of ICANN (the group that develops policies for website naming architecture) approved opening up the website naming system so that almost any word could be a domain. (Press Release Available Here)

Until now, obviously .com has ruled the landscape and other domains such as .net, .edu, or .info have seen some use. But now ICANN has approved a policy that would allow “applicants for new names to self-select their domain name so that choices are most appropriate for their customers or potentially the most marketable.” So, we could soon see domains such as:

.rentals

.jobs

.cars

.sports

Now before you get ready to join in a land-rush to claim names and then cash in like some did in the early .com days, ICAAN officials have estimated that prices for the new domains would be in the low six-figures. From a marketing perspective though I think owning domains like this will be a no-brainer for many companies. For instance, instead of Coke.com for the Coca-Cola website the website name could be Drink.Coke or Coca.Cola.

1st Quarter Denver Residential Vacancy Rate Report

Last week, I posted an entry about the single-family vacancy rate in Denver falling to 3.3 in the 4th quarter of 2007. I had been reviewing the Colorado Division of Housing website hoping to get more recent data but 4th quarter was all I was finding. Today however, I went back because I knew the 1st quarter report had to be coming out soon and sure enough I was able to find it. And….once again…..the single-family vacancy rate in Denver has fallen. From the report:

The overall vacancy rate for the metro area for the first quarter of 2008 was 2.7 percent, down from 3.3 percent for the fourth quarter of 2007, down from 4.2 for the first quarter of 2007; down from 4.9 for the first quarter of 2006 and down from 7.3 percent for the first quarter of 2005, and 9.1 percent for the first quarter of 2004.

From 9.1% in Q1 of 2004 all the way down to 2.7% in Q1 of 2008. Wow!

The complete 35 page report slices and dices the data in a number of ways including breaking it down by property type (house/condo/townhouse/etc), average days on market, rental rates, etc, etc. I’ve included the full report down below, but here are some of the items that caught my eye:

-Denver Metro vacancy rate for 3 bedroom houses – 1.1%

-Vacancy rate in Douglas County – 1.1%

-Vacancy Rate in Arapahoe County – 1.6%

-Average Rents increased to $984.63 from $966.01 in Q4 2007

Click Here for Complete Denver Rent & Vacancy Survey

Rentals.com Launches Official Company Blog

Today, Rentals.com launched an official company blog which can be found at: http://blog.rentals.com/. Many employees will be contributing to the blog and it is intended to be a great resource for company & industry news for property managers, owners, investors, and tenants.