Welcome

What is TenantMarket?

TenantMarket is a service that will help connect supply and demand in the rental market. Pretty vague, right? We’ll be able to say more when we launch our service later this Spring. Suffice it to say:

#1 Unlike previous Internet ventures in the rental housing market, our first priority is not large apartment communities and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT's). Our aim is helping renters find properties from independent and small landlords.

#2 TenantMarket is not another listing service.

Who’s behind it?

A small team based in Austin, Texas led by me (Jeremy Bencken). I previously co-founded ApartmentRatings.com.

After five years helping ApartmentRatings.com become one of the Internet’s most widely-used apartment-hunting websites (according to comScore the site was #6 in renter traffic, according to Alexa.com #5), I decided to take what I learned and develop a service that helps the least-served consumers in the rental market. With the help of some MBA students from the McCombs School of Business at UT-Austin, over the course of nine months, we interviewed and surveyed hundreds of small and independent landlords nationwide. Combined with our years of experience serving renters, we discovered a number of pain points still plague the process of filling vacancies via the Internet. From this process, we created a roadmap for TenantMarket.com. We’re confident this service will dramatically improve the rental market for both landlords and renters.

Why a blog?

While our product is still in the oven, we felt a blog would be the best way to start contributing to the on-going discussion about technology and business and its intersection with the rental housing market. We have opinions to share about developments like Craigslist v. Oodle, Google Maps, and Edgeio, the impact of the Internet on local advertising, not to mention the cool stuff on blogs like Techcrunch, eHub, and Scoble’s blog. Our goal is to participate in the blogosphere conversation even while our product is still baking.

Who is writing this blog?

We’ll have postings from two groups: TechBiz (our management and marketing teams) and Coredev (our development team). TechBiz will cover Internet marketing, strategy, industry commentary, Austin, and startup life. Coredev will cover web development ranging from fun with MySQL, Javascript, and Java to helpful tricks and tips we find along the way.

Who should read this blog?

Anyone with property to rent
People who rent their home
Industry analysts and wonks
Real Estate Brokers, Agents, and Apartment Locators
Geeks
Startup Entrepreneurs & Bootstrappers
Anyone with a passion for using the Internet to better connect supply and demand.

We’re looking forward to a great conversation!