Experts Estimate that 25% of Home Shoppers Are Dual Tracking: In the Market to Buy or Rent

Real estate portals adopting rental search

By Associated Press business staff

January 15, 2010, 5:35PM

LOS ANGELES -- In a strategic move, two of the biggest real estate sites -- Zillow.com and Trulia.com -- are joining the crowded ranks of rental Web sites.

The decisions come as more people are shut out of the housing market. Some 30 percent of households rent, but that figure is growing amid high unemployment, rising foreclosures and tighter mortgage lending standards.

Zillow launched its rental search function last month. While it only has about 2,000 rentals listings right now, the company plans to boost that number sharply in the next couple of months by taking in listings from brokerages.

"We think about one-quarter of all home shoppers now are dual tracking, they're actually in the market to buy or to rent," says Spencer Rascoff, Zillow's chief operating officer.

Trulia expects to debut its rentals search with more than 4.5 million listings within the next six months.

"We're building multiple tools to help consumers compare, contrast and make better decisions on whether they should be renting or buying in today's market," spokesman Ken Shuman said.

Seven out of the 10 most visited real estate Web sites last month offer rentals, according to Hitwise, an Internet tracking firm.

Increasingly, real estate agents are advertising homes on Web sites like Realtor.com to find tenants, not just buyers. Some rental sites are also getting listings from Multiple Listing Services -- databases of homes compiled by real estate agents.

"A lot of times we now notice that a home will be listed both for rent and for sale on our site, because the homeowners are having trouble selling the home," says Douglas Pope, co-founder of real estate search site HotPads.com.

A bounty of choices is a good problem to have if you're a renter. But don't expect to find the universe of available properties on a single Web site.

It helps to know what kind of rental you prefer: a house, an apartment in a small building, or a bigger complex full of amenities like a gym, pool or 24-hour security.

Generally, Web sites for rentals let users comb property listings for free. Most display photos, interactive maps, the ability to search by city, ZIP code or attributes such as number of bedrooms, price or amenities. They also include contact information for the leasing agent or owner.

Narrowing choices is the name of the game, and some sites make it easier than others.

Craigslist.org is a favorite with individual building owners, homeowners and property management firms. The portal, which has sites for 30 or so markets, doesn't charge for ads.

But its no-frills approach makes winnowing searches cumbersome and time-consuming compared to other sites. You can try to focus a search by ZIP code, or city, but you may get listings that are outside those parameters.

Still, it has filters that help someone looking to rent a room, swap houses or rent their property for only a few months -- something many other sites don't.

And Craigslist's rental listings are sorted by date and die off after a week in several major markets, which means they can be more current than those on other rental sites.

Some portals, such as Apartments.com and Rent.com, cull many of their listings from property managers handling large apartment complexes or condos. I didn't see many smaller properties turn up in several searches, however.

Others sites, like Realtor.com, offer condos or single-family homes listed by real estate agents, but not apartments.

Rentals.com gathers all kinds of rental property listings and lets users narrow searches by type of property. The firm says it has 72,000 unique listings, but cautions that available properties vary from market to market and "sometimes can be very low."

Zillow, meanwhile, which already provides a trove of neighborhood data, among other features, estimates people looking to rent account for more than 10 percent of its visitors.

Those would-be renters can search homes for sale or rent at the same time. They can also find Zillow's estimate on what it would cost them to rent or buy in the same neighborhood.

The concept is similar to a feature HotPads rolled out three years ago. The site lets users scan a map dotted with homes for sale and for rent. Trulia.com appears to be planning a similar rent-versus-own feature.

With the foreclosure crisis expected to continue this year, that's a calculation a many potential renters will be doing.