Sprint recently launched location based rental apartment search with apartments.com. This is a subscription service for $2.99 per month. Sprint also offers Recently Sold Homes by Smarter Agent for $4.99 per month.
When I was looking for apartment few years back, I would first go through Internet listings, Washington Post and other print media to locate the apartment listings in my desired area, get the phone number, setup and appointment and go see the apartment. The act of me calling the apartment company taught me that not always all the advertised apartments are available and not always all the rates are accurate. Sometimes they even had deals better than advertised in the print. However, when I did go to see the apartments, I was nearly ready.
This new location based service for rental search will allow the future renter to pull up listings of apartments, say while driving from work to home or in the neighborhood of choice. Of course, the user can still do old method of searching by typing in zip code.
Now, the real time nature of pulling up listings raises several questions -
1. If the listings I pull up are not really available, then I will get frustrated. That means apartments.com will have to get apartment managements to feed inventory in real time.
2. It is not every month that I am searching for rental unit (unless I am a real estate agent). In that case, why would I pay subscription for the months when I am not searching.
Perhaps charging per use basis will be better? Is it even feasible?
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