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Schneider Speaks at Affordable Housing Conference
RentLinx Featured in metromode e-Magazine
RentLinx has a great feature article in today's edition of
metromode e-magazine written by
Tanya Muzumdar! RentLinx was featured as part of their ongoing series "From Scratch".
Read RentLinx's "From Scratch" article in metromode
From their website, "[metromode] posts daily reports on job growth and development in Southeast Michigan, from Detroit to Ann Arbor. A free, weekly e-magazine is published Thursdays.
With community directories and guides for Southeast Michigan cities, metromode is a resource for people who want to work, build a business, relocate or visit here."
New Rent Ranges, No More Unit Groups
We recently released an exciting new update to the RentLinx interface for property managers!
We have done away with the concept of "unit groups" and instead allow property managers
much more flexibility when listing their unit or floor plan information.
Now, when a property manager lists or edits a unit, she chooses if the unit is a:
- Single Family Home:
This type is to be used when the entire property
rents under one lease, as with a single family home.
- Specific Unit:
Property managers can choose to list each unit
at their property individually.
- Type of Unit:
This new option lets property managers list a type of unit. Additionally,
managers can list how many of this type of unit exist, and how many they would like to advertise as available.
If you are familiar with the "unit group" interface, you may notice that your properties look a bit different when you login.
Rest assured, that your property information has not changed. Renters will view your properties exactly
as they did before. Now your admin interface more closely matches what prospective residents see.
Along with this change, RentLinx now offers the ability to add rent ranges for all units!
Top 5 Benefits of Automatically Updating Your Account
Property managers, did you know that RentLinx offers you the ability to automatically update your RentLinx account? Your property information is pulled directly from your property management software or local database using our
DataLinx service. You never have to manually update your RentLinx account and your ads always stay current!
DataLinx is now better than ever! Below is an exciting top 5 list of DataLinx features that you may not have known!
- No programmers required - DataLinx can now accept data files in virtually any format. As long as your local database or management software can produce a file with your property data, DataLinx can accept it and automatically update your RentLinx account. Our highly qualified developers will help you through the entire process, making it easy on you.
- Two ways to update - Once you have your data file, you can upload it through the RentLinx website to instantly update all of your properties. Better yet, if your file can be placed at a location on your website (like http://www.example.com/MyFile.xml) we will automatically read your file nightly and you will never even need to login to RentLinx. (But you still may want to in order to review your traffic and leads!)
- Eliminate Typos - You will save money and headaches by ensuring that your online ads contain only accurate, up-to-date information. You will never have to retype the same information into two different systems, eliminating the double-entry and human error.
- Stay at the top of the list - Many of our partner sites, including
ShowMeTheRent.com, sort all of the listings by the date they were last updated. DataLinx will automatically update your account nightly, keeping your ads at the top of the list!
- Save time - Manually entering and updating all of your property information can be a time consuming process. DataLinx will do all of the work for you! You won't even need to log in to RentLinx and your listings will be advertised on our partner sites throughout the Internet!
Please
contact us if you have any questions, or visit our DataLinx page to see pricing and learn more!
Ready to go? Visit our buy now page to purchase DataLinx and begin automatically updating your RentLinx account!
More than 10,000 Properties Now Listed
Just over two years after we went live and allowed property managers to list their properties for free, RentLinx now has over 10,000 active property listings representing just under 300,000 housing units!
RentLinx by the numbers as of 1/1/2008
| 46: | States with at least one property listed |
| 55: | Websites that are fed or powered by RentLinx |
| 1,392 | Zip codes with at least one property listed |
| 3,620 | Management companies |
| 6,295 | Active users |
| 10,577 | Active properties listed |
| 290,480: | Active units represented |
| 1,057,848: | Visits during 2007 to
our network of sites according to
Google Analytics |
| 7,577,999: | Page views during 2007 according to Google Analytics |
In very rough terms, most of these statistics are doubling about every 6 months, so we are looking forward to 2008!
Renters Can Now Mark and Save Favorites
Our friends at the
Michigan State Housing Development Authority and many of
our WebLinx clients
have given us some great feedback and asked for a way for renters to save favorite properties on their websites. We responded and added a new "favorites" feature! Renters can now mark and save their favorite properties on any RentLinx-powered website by clicking the star next to the property name in the search results or the property details pages.
Renters can begin marking favorites right away without logging in or creating an account! If a renter wants to save her list of favorites between visits, she can create an account in one step and login to access her saved favorites. Our favorites feature also makes use of the cool new AJAX technology so marking favorites is quick and easy.
Try the new feature by searching for
rental housing on our sister site ShowMeTheRent.com and marking and saving some favorites!
If your company has added your RentLinx listings to your company website
(WebLinx), you automatically have this new feature on your website!
New Fraud Detection for your Safety
When a website becomes more popular and draws more traffic it invariably attracts some Internet users with impure intentions. I'm proud to announce that RentLinx has crossed that threshold!
In the last few months a few Internet scam artists have visited RentLinx-powered websites posing as renters! One of the basic scams works like this:
- A scam artist contacts a property manager posing as a renter.
- The scam artist says he is moving to the area from overseas and needs to quickly rent a unit.
- The scam artist graciously offers to send a check (often times for more than the required move-in cost).
- Once the manager receives the check, the scam artist tells her that he needs furniture delivered to his house, but cannot arrange it from his current location. He asks that she forward some of his check to the furniture company's bank account.
- Sure enough, his original check bounces, and the furniture company was actually his own personal bank account.
Don't let this happen to you! To help you detect fraudulent leads, RentLinx has implemented a new technique to show you the country of origin of users who contact you. Almost always these scam artists operate from outside of the United States and Canada where there is virtually no risk of being penalized by law enforcement.
Below is an ACTUAL message sent from a scam artist in Nigeria which was appropriately flagged.
Note that the user claims to be from London, but our system shows they are writing from Nigeria (which is a hot bed for Internet fraud).
Remember to always use common sense and never send money AWAY from your account. Hopefully this new fraud detection technique will help.
Craiglist Helper is Now Free!
We're proud to announce that our
craigslist helper tool is now free to all! In addition, we've recently updated the tool to make it even MORE useful. Now, the photos associated your property are automatically included in the body of your post so you don't have to upload attachments separately!
If you aren't familiar with our craigslist helper tool,
check it out here.
If you would like to use the craigslist helper tool, just click
Choose Websites in your account and click the "Add My Properties To This Website" button on the craigslist row.
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