Real estate marketplace Zillow Inc. is now providing rental property managers, agents and landlords with a free suite of tools to manage and market their listings, and offering an additional level of service to paid subscribers that includes extended listing distribution, credit screening and an email marketing platform.
The launch of Zillow Rentals follows on the heels of the company’s $40 million acquisition of San Francisco-based RentJuice, announced in May.
All of RentJuice’s technology solutions, including a customer relationship management (CRM) platform for managing leads and relationships, rental listings management software and syndication, consumer credit screening, and secure online rental application management, are now available under the Zillow Rentals brand.
"We have been aggressively expanding into software tools for real estate professionals in order to become more critical to their workflow and productivity," said Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff in a statement. "The RentJuice acquisition four months ago laid the foundation for this expansion in rentals, and today’s announcement brings us one step closer toward our vision of rewiring the rental industry."
Zillow launched rental search in December 2009.
The free suite of tools for rental managers announced today includes distribution of listings to the Zillow Rental Network on Zillow.com and Yahoo Homes Listings also can be made accessible and searchable through free widgets for rental professionals’ Facebook pages and websites.
A free CRM platform for managing listings, generating leads and building tenant relationships is available on the Web and through the Zillow Rental Pro apps on Apple iOS and Android.
Zillow Rentals also provides free online rental applications and transaction management tools allowing rental applications to be completed using a Web browser or mobile device during a property tour.
Subscribers to a paid program, Zillow Rental Premier, also get extended listing syndication across 30 consumer websites, an email marketing platform, and leasing tools including online consumer credit screening.
In conjunction with the Zillow Rentals launch, Zillow has created a new a new Twitter handle @ZillowRentals, and blog, Zillow for Pros Blog, which replaces the RentJuice blog, The Rental Standard.