Just launched my business and am debating how to best proceed. Keep at it on my own on a shoestring, bring in a partner, seek funding or a mixture of any.
My business is based in the residential real estate market. I came to this rather large niche first as a customer when I discovered the need. In short, I built a portal for rental property owners to post their property listings online. Yes, yes, yes there are plenty of others already doing this including some freaking huge public companies. I know. I have done my due diligence. I live in Las Vegas like a few of the members here. Even though there are many companies out there targeting this niche, the very unfriendly CL .com is still king here and most if not all places. I’m not going to go into detail about all the other competitors and their faults, let me just sum them up in a quick list from the top of my head:
Fraudulent/bait-and-switch/misleading listings, posts with no pictures or no information on the rental, can’t contact the agent/property, way too difficult to search through the listings, costs too much to post, flooded with old and expired rental properties, etc.
I am to out clean up the nonsense and offer a simple-to-use website that allows users the ability to search for all the properties via a map and have the ability to filter each property to only show what features they want or need. They will also be able to do so knowing that the properties on the site are real, available, and contain all the necessary information as well as pictures. While I obviously cannot guarantee that each property is real I will have processes in place to combat and highly discourage fraudulent listings.
I am starting in Las Vegas only. I will scale it out once the Vegas area is a success and can model out what works best. It will be a very hands on business to begin with. Without going into the entire process and marketing plan, the business will work like this:
Build up the database with listings. Market the site with the listings in place in areas where the customers are already looking. Build up a steady user base. Set out a sales team to personally visit all the apartment complexes in the area to sell them on posting their complexes on the site (shouldn’t be a difficult sale). Continue the heavy marketing till the site obtains sufficient direct users to declare my business as the go-to site for rental properties in Las Vegas. Then scale it.
I would love advice, opinions on the site, etc. The site is in a very simple state as I was burned trying to outsource the programming and ended up having to build it myself. I know enough to know that I know nothing when it comes to programming.
I would like to keep my company name from being tied to this thread, but I don’t mind letting everyone here go see the site. The website can be seen at rent @ blz . com just change the @ to a normal ‘a’.
My business is based in the residential real estate market. I came to this rather large niche first as a customer when I discovered the need. In short, I built a portal for rental property owners to post their property listings online. Yes, yes, yes there are plenty of others already doing this including some freaking huge public companies. I know. I have done my due diligence. I live in Las Vegas like a few of the members here. Even though there are many companies out there targeting this niche, the very unfriendly CL .com is still king here and most if not all places. I’m not going to go into detail about all the other competitors and their faults, let me just sum them up in a quick list from the top of my head:
Fraudulent/bait-and-switch/misleading listings, posts with no pictures or no information on the rental, can’t contact the agent/property, way too difficult to search through the listings, costs too much to post, flooded with old and expired rental properties, etc.
I am to out clean up the nonsense and offer a simple-to-use website that allows users the ability to search for all the properties via a map and have the ability to filter each property to only show what features they want or need. They will also be able to do so knowing that the properties on the site are real, available, and contain all the necessary information as well as pictures. While I obviously cannot guarantee that each property is real I will have processes in place to combat and highly discourage fraudulent listings.
I am starting in Las Vegas only. I will scale it out once the Vegas area is a success and can model out what works best. It will be a very hands on business to begin with. Without going into the entire process and marketing plan, the business will work like this:
Build up the database with listings. Market the site with the listings in place in areas where the customers are already looking. Build up a steady user base. Set out a sales team to personally visit all the apartment complexes in the area to sell them on posting their complexes on the site (shouldn’t be a difficult sale). Continue the heavy marketing till the site obtains sufficient direct users to declare my business as the go-to site for rental properties in Las Vegas. Then scale it.
I would love advice, opinions on the site, etc. The site is in a very simple state as I was burned trying to outsource the programming and ended up having to build it myself. I know enough to know that I know nothing when it comes to programming.
I would like to keep my company name from being tied to this thread, but I don’t mind letting everyone here go see the site. The website can be seen at rent @ blz . com just change the @ to a normal ‘a’.
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