Sellsius broke the news of Zillow getting into rentals back in January of last year (Zillow tells Sellsius Rentals Are Next). Enter Zilpy.
Zilpy, partnering* with Zillow**, has launched a rental “research” site to compete with Rentometer, the site that compares your rent to other rental properties in the area. I wrote about Rentometer and found it to be very user friendly.
*According to Drew Myers of Zillow: “To clarify the relationship between Zilpy & Zillow — there is no formal strategic partnership between our companies. Zilpy is, however, planning to use quite a bit of data from the Zillow API” (source: 4realz.net -emphasis added). Hmm… so if you “plan” to use data from a Zillow API, looks like you can use the Zillow logo and “partner” label. Zowie!!
**Interestingly, one of the founders reportedly said Zilpy was “the Trulia for the rental market”. Gee, these folks know how to name drop.
So let’s compare Zilpy to Rentometer.
My Search criteria: Studios in zip code 10314 (Staten Island, NY)
Here’s Rentometer’s Home Page Search Box:
Here’s the Zilpy Search Box:
Both search boxes require you to type location, with 2 drop downs– for property type & bedrooms. and are easy to understand. Rentometer lets you choose the number of units in the property (neighbors to deal with) and bedrooms up to 8. Zilpy lets you choose a property type (apartment/condo /single family/duplex) and square footage (but only bedrooms up to 4).
The results for Zilpy appeared like this:
A Snapshot section: Hey, there are 52 rentals at an average rent of $967. Yippee!?
A heat map. The higher median rents are in the darker regions. But the map included areas of Staten Island outside 10314, but you could not tell from the map. Whereas the snapshot gave “average rent”, heat map used “median rents”. Things are starting to get fuzzy.
Instead of zip codes, mapped neighborhoods were displayed as Numbers (with the total number of rentals in each in parenthesis). But most of these are not 10314 neighborhoods! The numbers are not nice either– I first had to click the map section to get the neighborhood number and then look up the neighborhood number below. I’m tired already. There was no indication where the properties were located within each “numbered neighborhood.” The only benefit is knowing that generally rents are lower in certain areas. Yippee for Zilpy.
Zilpy also has Census data on the 10314 zip code. The data comes from the 2000 Census. Although it’s 2008, there is data which is probably still helpful.
Here’s what Rentometer gave me: It showed 111 properties to Zilpy’s 52 and a rent range from $346-1840 (a studio for $346? I doubt it). Zilpy’s rents ranged from $675 to 2650 ($2650 for a studio on SI? I doubt it.)
Rentometer’s map has stick pins, and satellite, map and hybrid views. As with Zilpy’s map, most of the rental properties are outside the 10314 zip code. But you can identify each property, rental price and location by clicking the pin. Problem is, there don’t seem to be 111 pins and some properties are in New Jersey. Yikes!
Where does the data come from? Zilpy says it comes from online sources, including Google Base, while Rentometer says it gets its data directly from leasing companies. Neither are all inclusive, especially on Staten Island, where there are a lot of For Rent By Owners (those rentals you probably won’t find with a leasing company)
Bottom Line: Talk to a local expert and find the place where people list their property. It may not be a national site like Zilpy.
Both sites have their plusses and minuses. For Rentometer, the meter is a neat visual, with low, high and median rents and the mapping is a bit more precise as to the property locations. You can also list property on the site. Zilpy’s heat map is useful for a general price feel of an area and the Census data is an added plus.
Neither site will find you a good deal, however. For that, you’ll have to check out the rental properties yourself and, if you knew Staten Island, the newspaper of record, The Staten Island Advance (its online portal has 56 rental properties in the actual 10314 zip code). In my opinion, it is more useful than either Rentometer or Zilpy. Which goes to show— real estate is local and you have to know the locality. If you don’t, talk to a professional who does (or at least a local).
BTW, neither site will tell you the location of the world’s largest landfill (known as “the dump” to locals) located on Staten Island. That’s Unzilpable, the rental variant of unzillowable.
Further Reading:
Zilpy, the new “Z” site in online real estate (Inman News)
Technorati Tags: zilpy, rentometer, Staten Island, search, rents, rentals
