Craig Rowe reviews RentEdge rental management software, which is for real estate agents and includes features for landlord services, renter screening and MLS integration across 300+ markets nationwide.
Innovation is in our DNA at Inman — that’s why we’re excited about August’s Technology and Innovation Month. We’ll kick it off by celebrating the companies and individuals pushing the industry forward with an expanded slate of Inman Innovator Awards at Inman Connect San Diego. Then, we’ll continue to celebrate the brightest minds in real estate all month long.
RentEdge by RentSpree is software for managing business with renters, landlords and property managers
Notable benefits
- Establish a new leads channel, albeit longer-term
- Expand into investors/landlord services
- Supports larger, existing property management operations
- Direct MLS link ensures easy, relevant data connection
- Stay ever-connected to renters as they make housing decisions
- Great way for new agents to build a database
Who is RentSpree?
RentSpree launched as an applicant screening system for multifamily operators, offering efficiencies and value through a modern, connected web interface as an alternative for a traditionally fragmented, manual process.
The company quickly expanded its software offerings to become a multifamily platform, naturally aligning a wide range of business tasks for landlords and property managers, such as automated fee and rent collection, batch application processing for renters, vacancy and community marketing, rent-pricing forecasts and renters insurance options.
That growth led to an enterprise offering for portfolio operators and a number of other ancillary benefits for an expanding swath of customers, attracting residential sales agents who understand the rental market as an ever-present opportunity to uncover future homebuyers.
RentSpree recognized multiple listing services as a resource to drive adoption for the corner of its audience in single-family sales, a portion of which also works with investors. It’s also common for property management companies to be association members and MLS users. It has partnered with more than 300 in all 50 states.
Craig’s view
RentEdge combines legacy products from RentSpree with new supporting functionality and an original user experience. It’s a full-fledged stand-alone software product, and I see it as the culmination of the company’s first era of product development.
With this, RentSpree has something new to work on and build from. I expect it’ll only become lighter and smarter from here, especially as they look to integrate artificial intelligence tools, automated renewal appeals, more prescient application analyses and possibly lost rent pursuit plans.
The software offers a series of content modules. For example, “Insights” translates data from a host MLS into actionable information and can be displayed within your MLS, too.
Distribute, an updated legacy function, gives landlords syndication tools for marketing on prominent apartment portals. Within that, users can monitor which portals are driving leads, when viewing appointments are scheduled and observe the flow of new applications.
There is, of course, a full applicant screening feature with progress markers and data from Applylink, RentSpree’s easily shareable URL-based fast application tool. It’s now easier than ever to deploy it, too.
Connect and its sister function, Nurture, allow users to find and stay in front of rental and landlord leads on their pathway to buying or selling, respectively, as well as match renters with landlords.
I want agents to understand that RentEdge can open up another line of business for residential agents. Individual landlords often buy more properties, and renters often renew or relocate at a much faster pace than buyers and sellers transact. Of course, the money isn’t the same, nor in most cases the deal structure, but it’s business nonetheless, and over time, it accumulates both financially and from a brand perspective. Oh yeah, and renters often become buyers, lest you forget.
If you wanted to move into property management or, in some fashion, find a way to use it as a side gig assisting a few investors, RentEdge can support that. It’s a compelling way to launch into a real estate line of work most don’t consider, built by a company with close to a decade of expertise providing solutions for renters and rental property operators. It’s a smart evolution of a product that could have rested on its initial screening and application tools.
I think RentEdge is RentSpree’s future. It’s more tangible and definitely more agent-friendly. It should help residential agents realize what’s possible in the rental space by placing its opportunities in the context of a solution that feels familiar but in other ways refreshing, like so many CRMs and marketing systems they’ve been wandering into for years and later forgotten.
Insights
In a press release on RentEdge, the company’s Chief Experience Officer, Michael Story, said that MLSs are looking for something like this. “This initiative is specifically designed to do just that, delivering tools that are easy to access, intuitive to use, and directly tied to business growth.”
I worry that despite the company’s success in getting partnerships, it’ll face greater headwinds in getting them to display the Insights module. It’s a worthy goal but risky. I can envision visual and display complications, broken feeds and the need for a lot of support.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.