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
Both websites will have trouble getting a complete database of homes for rent in any market until they pull information from Realtors and Newspapers.
It seems Rentometer’s source of information would be more accurate but less complete since the information is coming from leasing companies. This is based on my local market (Jacksonville, Florida) where there are more rentals in the newspaper then there are in the MLS. And I am assuming that a leasing company would price their homes closer to market then an actual owner.
On the other hand, Zilpy’s data would be more complete if they are able to grab the rental listings from all the local newspapers. From you article it seems they don’t pull data from all the sources available in your area.
I totally agree that a Realtor’s local knowledge of the area and the particular properties can provide insight that the websites can not.
It would be interesting to see which website gets more complete data coverage first.
Also, there is no specific information on the rental properties. So it is extremely difficult, nay impossible, to make a useful comparison from one unit to the next. No photos. No lease terms. What’s not included in the rent, what is included, is there parking, a washer-dryer? yada yada yada.
So what happens is you spend a lot of time getting general sense of apartment rentals and you still have to look at the apartments. And that will never change. Besides, you get a general sense of value and going rates when you hit the pavement and see what computers can’t.
As a Realtor who sells a number condos and townhomes in a resort market I thought this would be a great tool to share with my buyers and investors. Unfortunately there are no/very few results for my area. Another huge flaw I noticed for any resort town similar to mine is that rentals ON the ocean tend to rent for a significantly higher rate than those a few blocks away even though they may be on the same street. I may be wrong but I don’t believe either application takes these factors into account.
Good point Mike. Only those familiar with a local market can identify those factors which add or detract from value.