Rental Industry – Impact of Per Unit Listings

Read how CoStar is building the rental listing of the future

The Shift to Per Unit Rental Listings and Why it Matters

Per unit rental listings are changing how renters shop for apartments and what it may cost owners to be seen. The ability to see apartment unit level details has been talked about for years, but not executed against. Prospective renters could check their views, understand where their unit is in the overall property and see what the unit looks like from the inside without ever touring the property. This is available when buying a house. Why not a rental? I remember renting my first apartment sight unseen when we moved from Cleveland to Chicago. We got into the unit and looked out the window. It was overlooking the garbage dumpster. Wasn’t a good experience, but they did let us move to a different apartment. It would be fantastic to see apartment marketplaces and property websites adopt unit listings.

The Cost Impact on Owners and Operators

There are many other implications to unit level listings that the Rental Industry should be thinking about…

1) Renting out units Airbnb style – The more unit content created the easier it is to rent out your unit to someone else.

2) Paid spend – Advertising/buying keywords for both entire properties and now apartment units. Spend can get more tactical.

3) Search engine optimization – Both organic unit results and property results.  

4) Industry pricing and changes to rental marketplace business models – There are significant implications based on unit level listings. 

This is great news for consumers, for digital marketplaces, but for owners and managers of properties these changes will likely impact their advertising costs.

None of this happens in a vacuum, per unit listings are part of a bigger shift I covered in CoStar’s roll-up of the rental marketplace, where control of the listings is consolidating into a few platforms. Read how CoStar rolled-up the Rental Marketplace.