Apartment Guide publisher launches Rentals.com

The publisher of Apartment Guide and ApartmentGuide.com has launched Rentals.com, a consumer site that features about 45,000 rental listings for homes, condos, townhomes, apartments, lofts, college housing, corporate apartments, senior housing and vacation rentals.

The new site draws from listings in sister publications of Consumer Source Inc., a publisher of apartment, new home and auto guides, and Web sites. Consumer Source acquired RentalHouses.com in January and last year acquired RentClicks.com and HomeRentalAds.com.

Through its Apartment Guide publication and ApartmentGuide.com Web site, Consumer Source generated about 1 million leases for apartment property managers in 2005, according to a company announcement.

Jamie Gallo, president of Consumer Source Interactive, the division of Consumer Source that operates the company's Web sites, said in a statement, "Currently there is no one company that dominates the real estate rental category. Our strategy is to parlay our content leadership into the number one 'go-to' source for Real Estate rental advertisers and consumers."

The Rentals.com site includes listings for large communities, single units and vacation rentals. Large communities are generally defined as rental properties with 10 or more units, according to a company announcement, while single-unit properties include homes, townhouses, condos, lofts, duplexes, quadplexes and vacation rentals. Vacation rentals are defined as any property an owner chooses to rent for daily, weekly or monthly terms.

Rentals.com offers a "photo mosaic" feature that provides a gallery of photo and floor-plan imagery on the detail page for property listings, and consumers can click to enlarge each image. Property-search results can be sorted by property type, area, price, number of bedrooms and other criteria.

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