Free-Rentals Vacation Rentals

Rentbits is a search engine focused on helping people find apartments and houses for rent, but it has released a new feature that allows users to see the average and median rental prices of properties in 4,000 cities across the United States. 
 
Rentbits has analyzed 7 million rental entries in its database, compiling historical graphs displaying the general pricing trends in each region (unsurprisingly, few of them seem to be heading upwards). Users can choose to view averages related to the entire market, and can also narrow it down by the number of bedrooms they’re looking for (there’s also an option for houses for rent).

RentBits launched in March 2008, and is headed by ex-Googlers Dan Daugherty Tim Moynihan

Ms. Leena Rao has a great article about an up and newcomer to the vacation rental industry… AirBedandBreakfast.com, who recently rebranded as airbnb.com. Part of what makes the article great is that she mentions Free-Rentals.com as one of the main established competitors.
 
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/04/y-combinators-airbed-and-breakfast-casts-a-wider-net-for-housing-rentals-as-airbnb/
 
Air Bed and Breakfast has a great website, slick interface and originally started out as the name suggestions, with people offering to blow up an (air mattress in the livingroom perhaps) for an extra guest to stay for a few nights.
 
The guest benefits by getting accommodations far cheaper than a hotel and by getting to stay with locals and live more of the local lifestyle while on vacation. The host of the airbed gets a bit of extra cash for hosting the guest, not to mention, his or her companionship for a few days.
 
It’s a great idea, and couchsurfing, one of the more established players in this market is doing something similar.

By re-branding, Airbnb is now expanding out to include the vacation rental market. We feel they will have a hard time captivating the vacation rental market for the sole reason that they charge a hefty 7% commission on each booking.

The problem is not so much about the commission as it is the logistics come with becoming the broker between the rental seeker and the vacation rental home owner, and dealing with cancellations, discrepencies between the features and amenities listed and what is actually present in the rental, etc..
 
We wish them luck, and welcome them to the VR industry.

HomeAway, the Austin Texas based vacation rental website who also owns VRBO, VacationRentals.com, Abritel.fr, OwnersDirect.co.uk and several other vacation rental websites, just announced $250 million in additional funding.

This comes on top of a previous $209m raised earlier. The new financing provided by Technology Crossover Ventures, IVP and Redpoint Ventures.

Before the funding, Homeaway was valued at about $1.15 billion USD. They have revenues of around $150 million and $50 million. Ebay was rumored to have mulled over an acquisition earlier this year at $1.5 billion, but it never came through with an offer.

Source

In effort to extend our listings to a maximum audience. Free-Rentals.com has announced that it now supports the Vast.com format for vacation rental listings.

Vast.com’s revolutionary new microformat standard supporting Vacation Rental listings is a major step forward in opening up the system and removing the bottleneck that currently exists seperating rental seekers with rental home owners.

Free-Rentals.com supports this direction and looks forward to it’s partnership with vast.com.

Here is how a typical listing will appear on the vast.com website:

Mark Cuban makes an terrific point in his blog about the problems with free products and services. He says… 

“We dont want to waste our time with a product or service if its not worth anything. We want things of value, and we dont want to waste of lot of time trying to determine if what is being offered is something we would use or consume. The easiest way to make the determination ? See if anyone else is using it and paying for it.

When we see enough other people actually paying, and how much they are paying, that becomes our “due diligence” and market pricing mechanism. It also becomes part of the decision tree as to whether or not we would prefer a free version , or are willing to pay. For some, it becomes the determining factor on whether or not they are willing to steal rather than pay.

Which translates to the conventional wisdom that free is the way to go on the web as being wrong. I think many websites are making a huge mistake by going free only for their products. The real upside comes from being a hybrid, with both free and for pay versions.

When people actually pay for your product, you define a value to everyone. First you have to keep your paying customers happy. They want their money’s worth. Which in turn, keeps you improving the product and the service surrounding it. Just as importantly, it creates a revenue stream for your company. Always remember this. Without a revenue stream, you have no company.”

We agree with Mark’s observation, yet, our website free-rentals.com remains free for anyone to sign up and list any number of Vacation Rentals they want. And we will keep it free.
 
So, how do we make business?
 
Simple. We have a performance based model. Our customers who pay (donate) to us will benefit from the non-donating customers, because we use a significant percentage of their donation to pay for direct sales and marketing efforts that the free-rentals.com website doesn’t get with organic search results alone.
 
Source