Siliconrepublic start up of the week write up.

Rentview app aims to disrupt rental marketplace

04.12.2011

Our tech start-up of the week is Rentview, a rent and property management cloud-based platform for estate and letting agencies to manage, build and retain their rental portfolios. It is also aiming to help tenants manage their monthly rental payments more efficiently.

Rentview was set up in Dublin in early 2010 and went into Beta with 10 agencies in July to test features and get feedback.

The duo behind Rentview are Andreas Riha and Colin Napper, both previous owners of a letting agency in Dublin.

“We learnt all the problems associated with having a lettings and management portfolio. We saw an opportunity to streamline the process by automating the estate and letting agent’s job as much as possible,” they told Siliconrepublic.com yesterday.

So how did the business get up and running? Firstly, Napper entered the DIT Hothouse programme in October 2010. He said he gained valuable knowledge about launching a business in the internet space.

“We applied much of that learning to developing our minimum viable product. We entered an agreement with our developers who developed the Rentview app as they loved the concept and we boot-strapped getting it off the ground with money from ourselves and personal loans.”

The Rentview team itself comprises Napper, who is CEO, Riha, director of sales and marketing, Kurt Funai, senior developer, and Cormac Nugent, marketing.

Helping hand

But have there been any entities that have helped Rentview along the way?

“We found the DIT Hothouse programme to be very beneficial and they provided incubation office space for free, which allowed us to develop the Rentview app. We also got an innovation voucher that facilitated DCU to help us with market research. And we are currently engaged with Enterprise Ireland with regard to launching Rentview for the UK market,” explained Riha yesterday.

Dublin Beta

Recently, Rentview showcased its app at Dublin Beta.

“We met some very cool people, most of them tech heads who were tenants and we explained the benefits of tenants using Rentview. All of them saw the value of being on Rentview from a tenant’s perspective,” explained Napper.

“At Dublin Beta, there was a People’s Choice award. Through this, attendees got €3,000 in the value of poker chips as investment chips to give out to the start-up they liked. We came third out of 14 start-ups,” explained Riha.

But where is Rentview at right now in terms of its commercialisation strategy?

“The Rentview current product is ready for the Irish market and we are putting together a marketing campaign for January 2012. We want to ramp up sales to agencies in Ireland. Our plan is to develop the product for the UK market, which is 10 times bigger and the rental industry is more regulated there. So the UK is out next market target,” said Napper.

So what, exactly, is the advantage of people using this cloud-based product, rather than going down the traditional property-letting or renting route?

Riha explained that a Rentview customer is an agency which subscribes to Rentview via a software-as-a-service (SAAS) model. In turn, he said such an agency will get many benefits, including saving time, automating paperwork, streamlining processes and giving better customer service to landlords and tenants.

Lately, we have been hearing a lot in property circles that it is a renter’s marketplace right now, with the balance having shifted from being a landlords’ paradise.

Napper points to how the ESRI encouraged young people to rent this week.

“The supply of property in July 2009 in Dublin was 8,300 and is currently at 3,700. Rents are rising again because of lack of supply in some areas and landlords are getting hit with more taxes and regulations.

“Good tenants are a valuable commodity in the rental market and we plan on developing a renters’ referencing or accredited system for tenants who pay on time and leave properties in good condition. This minimises the risk for the agency and landlord and makes the job of an agency easier,” he said.

Advice for self-starters

And finally, what advice would Napper and Riha give to other people thinking of venturing out on their own?

They recommend reading The Lean Startup by Eric Ries before developing a new product.

“When we had the idea for Rentview it was way more detailed than what we currently have and would have cost us three times more to develop but we were advised to build the ‘minimum viable product’. Secondly, if you can get on a platform like the DIT Hothouse programme, or the NDRC LaunchPad/Inventorium, these people have great insight into new ventures. And, lastly, get out and and talk to people. Don’t be afraid. It’s only an idea you have and there are many of them,” added Riha and Napper.

Carmel Doyle |

November 24, 2011April 6, 2023

Setting up your Google places page for your agency.

So now that you have your Google Analytics set up, let’s focus on getting more visitors to your site.

Google places is a great way to build traffic to your site for FREE. Google places (map listings ) are now placed with the organic search results (non-paid results), with many Place pages located near the top of the results page. It will also increase your presence, giving you a boost in your organic search traffic. By setting up your Google places page you are ensuring your information is easily found and potential customers can find out more information on your businesses.

1 – Make or claim your Google Places Page

Your business may already have a Places page, even if you never set one up. Search for your brand name to see if one already exists. If there is a listing for your business, click to the place page and look for the “business owner?” link, then follow the instructions to claim it. If there is no places page for your business already, then start a new one at google.com/places.

2 – Verify Your Google Places Page

Next, verify your Google Places Page. You must verify that you are the business owner or else your listing will not be trusted by search engines. Unless it is verified, your listing might not appear in the search results, or how often it appears may be limited.

Verifying is simple, but it will take some time. When setting up your Places page, follow the instructions. Alternatively, click the ‘verify’ link when logged in to your places account. You will have to wait for a postcard to be delivered to your business address within 2-3 weeks (though you may get the option to receive a phone call instead).

Once your Places page is verified, you should optimise your page and make it easier for potential customers to find you.

Include keywords in the description of your Google Places page – Describe your business; keep it short and sweet. Include some keywords. Use Google Adwords keyword planner (this was Keyword tool) to help you to better understand what potential customers are typing in when they search for a service like yours. Don’t go for overkill though, just a few relevant keywords should do the trick!
Optimise your business title – In Google Places your business name should be your title. This could also include some information on your location. Google Adwords keyword planner should be useful again here.
Choose some appropriate categories – You can include up to five categories and this matters, however you should include only those categories which are relevant to your business.
Complete your Places page as much as possible – The more complete you can make your Google Places page the better. This gives you an edge over less complete pages in Google’s eyes. Some information you may want to include is; your opening hours, additional agency information, links to your properties advertised on pportal sites, and social media links. All this will make your pages more appealing to potential clients too.

4 –Rankings for Google places

Citations and mentions are more important than links to your website within Google Places, it is widely believed. Measuring the ‘buzz’ around certain local businesses or sites can be difficult for search engines so they try to take into account any mentions online. This is becoming more popular with the use of smart phones. You can look for chances to gain citations through –

Directories – Create a listing in any major directories; just be sure that your information is consistent across all listings you have online.
Review sites – Reviews give search engines a signal that your business is a real place that is known and liked (or disliked) by real people. Try to get reviews from your landlords on your services online.
Local Resources & Events Pages – Look for local directories, business listings, and event pages for opportunities to list your site. Check out competitors – visit their Google Places pages and see where their citations are coming from (you’ll see a list of links titled “more about this place” at the bottom of the page, which is a great place to start.)

5 – Optimize your website and be sure they can find you!

Good SEO for your website makes perfect sense as this willup your ranking in Google searches and attract visitors. This is also a good citation for your Google Places page. Include contact details in a prominent place on your website so that visitors can find them easily.

November 18, 2011

The Daily Business Post: Startup Of The Day: Rentview

Company: Rentview

Founders: Colin Napper, Andreas Riha

What it does: the company has created a cloud-software system that allows property agencies and landlords to manage their properties and any issues arising around those properties.

Development stage: active, product now on sale

Funding: none announced

Website: Rentview.com

While property sales may have slumped, property rentals have not. And, with an historically large stock of housing in the country, competition among agencies and among landlords is fierce. Competition puts pressure on resources. For landlords and agencies, time spent cataloguing and administering individual properties – and their inventory – is a luxury that is becoming increasingly scarce.

That’s where Rentview comes in. The Dublin-based firm has come up with automation software that creates an easy-to-use administration system for agencies, landlords and tenants.

“If you’re an agency or a landlord and don’t have software, you used to manage your rents in an Excel file or diary saying that rent is due on this date or that date,” said Colin Napper, the company’s chief executive. That has an awful lot of implications if it’s not marked off properly.”

Day-to-day things become crucial, said Andreas Riha, the company’s sales and marketing chief.

“You have tenants looking for documentation,” he said. “You also have landlords coming in for end-of-year accounts, plumbers invoices, fees and more.”

Rentview’s system involves doing an inventory of the stock and conditions of a property, which can then be catalogued using the system’s smartphone app.

The system costs €100 per month for up to 100 properties.

So far, the product is being trialled with 18 agencies who, among them, have 600 landlord clients and 1,500 tenants. Feedback has been positive, and a white-labelling service is being considered.

For Rentview, Ireland is just the beginning. While there are 1,600 property and letting agencies here, that pales in comparison with an estimated 25,000 agencies in Britain.

“At the end of the day, if you have a happy landlord who’s had a good service, he’s gonna keep you on and then refer you on,” said Napper.

Contact journalist: adrian@businesspost.ie. Contact desk: digital@businesspost.ie.

November 14, 2011

Increasing your property portfolio through the web

Having met with lots of different agencies over the last couple of months it appears that most, if not all agencies, are looking to expand and build their property portfolio for lettings and management.

So how can your agency increase its property portfolio?

Attract more landlords to your agency

If you want to increase your property portfolio, you’ll need to attract landlords first. The easiest way to do this is to attract them to your website. Your website should be the main port of call and act as a hub for activity. You need to have contact information clearly available on your website. Potential clients should be able to see 2 things from a quick glance at your website:

what services you offer
how to contact you

If you think about it, your website is like your international shop window. It could therefore gain you a lot of business. Equally, by not investing time effort (and some money) in a website, you are losing out on potential custom. After all, in today’s economic climate, landlords are increasingly based all around the world and these accidental landlords who may have initially rented the property prior to emigrating may now need assistance letting a property and/or managing one. New non-resident landlords are the customer most agencies are currently focusing their advertising towards. The non-resident landlord is most likely to take your full property management package and with property management software like Rentview, you are fully equipped to offer your landlords the ultimate management package.

Checklist

So it is very important to have your website:

looking well
regularly updated
attracting new visitors
analytics set up to track visitor trends
linked to your social media

Over the next few blog posts, I will take you through how to do all of this in some very easy to follow steps. All of these elements should help you to increase your property portfolio by harnessing the power of the web.