FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
BidRent.ca Launches "The eBay of Rental Properties"
LOS ANGELES, CA. (BusinessWire)-- BidRent.ca, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Idea Labz Corporation, www.IdeaLabz.com – a privately held internet incubation company with popular websites such as DiscountMore.com, BidRent.com and BidSell.com, today launched Canada’s first auction site targeting apartment and house rentals in Canada.
Called the “eBay of rental properties” , BidRent.ca enables landlords to list vacancies for free, giving potential tenants the opportunity to vie for new living spaces within the context of the popular online auction format.
Founded by internet mogul Bobby Khalili, this new approach to rental listing reduces vacancy rates by letting the market set the price.
"Landlords sometimes overshoot on rental prices,” offers Khalili. “As a result, properties remain unnecessarily vacant, and thousands of dollars in uncollected rent are lost. People buy and sell nearly everything at online auctions, but the phenomenon stops abruptly at rental units. Lessees rarely contact apartment owners to offer lower-than-listed rental prices.”
Khalili points to the buyer’s market, where the opposite is true: Bidding below list price on a new home purchase is not unusual—it’s the norm.
“Renting shouldn’t be any different. Landlords are open to negotiations, especially when faced with losing out on another month’s rent. BidRent.ca draws fresh lines of communication between owner and tenant.”
BidRent.ca also enables landlords to build unique profiles which bear descriptions and photographs of their showcased properties. In essence, landlords can make a free website for their property in order to make marketing the property easier.
With BidRent.ca, property owners afford all the marketing advantages of a dedicated website. URLs correspond to property addresses, meaning (example) www.BidRent.ca/QC119ParkPlace would link to a property on 119 Park Place in Quebec.
According to Mike Ebrahimi, the company’s President & Co-CEO, "With BidRent.ca profiles, tenants and buyers can browse, view pictures, leave messages and ask questions of the owners. The interested party may be inspired to make a casual offer. At that point, anything can happen.”
BidRent.ca will remain free of charge to both landlords and tenants. Khalili wants to encourage widespread use of the site, and subscribes to the notion that the most useful sites on the Net are offered at no cost.
"With real estate transactions at an all-time high, we firmly believe that BidRent.ca will become a valuable commodity for everyone in real estate—from average Joe’s to rental property magnates.”
Similar to the popularity of it’s sister companies BidRent.com, BidSell.com and BidSell.ca, Khalili believes that BidRent.ca’s popularity will grow in Canada as well.
To find your next dream home—or to fill your empty units fast—visit www.BidRent.ca today.
Media Contact:
Idea Labz Public Relations
1-877-4-IDEA LABZ
PR@IdeaLabz.com
About Idea Labz, Inc.
Idea Labz is a internet incubation and holding company with several popular online properties such as BidRent.com, BidRent.ca, BidSell.com, BidSell.ca, DiscountMore.com, DiscountMore.ca, DiscountMore.co.uk, DisocuntMore.com.au, and DiscountMore.travel. Founded by internet entrepreneur Bobby Khalili, the company seeks, funds, and manages innovative, revolutionary online concepts.
BidSell.ca Launches "The eBay of Real Estate"
LOS ANGELES, CA (BUSINESS WIRE) -- BidSell.ca, a wholly-owned subsidiary of
Idea Labz, Inc. www.IdeaLabz.com –an Internet incubation and holding company, today launched Canada’s first auction site targeting residential and commercial properties for sale.
Called "The eBay of real estate", BidSell.ca enables property owners, banks, and real estate agents to list commercial and residential properties for free, giving potential buyers the opportunity to vie for new living spaces within the context of the popular online auction format.
BidSell.ca and its subsidiary Idea Labz, Inc. are both founded by Bobby Khalili – a Los Angeles based internet entrepreneur. According to Khalili, “Similar to eBay.ca (NASDAQ: EBAY), BidSell.ca enables potential sellers to list their property on an auction style forum and receive bids on the property without the help of costly broker/agents”. The company plans to keep the service free to both sellers and buyers while focusing more on generating revenue from advertising.
BidSell.ca enables owners to build unique profiles which bear descriptions and photographs of their showcased properties. In essence, property owners can make a free website for their property in order to make marketing the property easier. URL’s correspond to property addresses, meaning www.BidSell.ca/QC119ParkPlace would link to a property on 119 Park Place in Quebec. The company also offers a customized FOR SALE sign with the property's website URL printed on the sign.
BidSell.ca claims they are first to market with a real estate auction site that gives property owners the tools to help sell their property without the use of an agent. The site offers property owners a free website for their property. Property owners afford all the marketing advantages of a dedicated website. According to Mike Ebrahimi, the company’s President & Co-CEO, “eBay.ca is the first to market with a real estate auction forum but they do not promote it. They offer no services to the seller such as dedicated websites for properties and customized For Sale signs”.
Like its popular sister company, BidRent.com and BidRent.ca, Ebrahimi feels that BidSell will be embraced by the real estate community. Although second to market after eBay, going head on with eBay while keeping the service free will encourage more listings and more transactions by the real estate community. With all of eBay’s success, popularity, and sheer dollar volume of transactions, they only have 340 real estate listings on the site. According to Ebrahimi, “The $300+ listing fee eBay charges restricts them from growing in the niche. It must be kept free in order to encourage usage of the site and eventually become more liquid”.
Ebrahimi goes on further to say, "With BidSell.ca profiles, buyers can browse, view pictures, leave messages and ask questions of the owners. The interested party may be inspired to make a casual offer. At that point, anything can happen."
BidSell.ca will remain free of charge to users indefinitely. Ebrahimi wants to encourage widespread use of the site, and subscribes to the notion that the most useful sites on the Net are offered at no cost.
"With real estate transactions at an all-time high, we firmly believe that BidSell.ca will become a valuable commodity for everyone in the real estate community - from average Joe's and experienced investors to broker/agents and banks”, says Khalili
The company plans to eventually start a brokerage division whereby offering sellers flat rate fees of $2,000 to list properties on the MLS. Buyers would receive 2/3 of the commission credited back to them. This type of cut throat pricing is what Khalili expects to happen in the near future. “Just like stock brokers and travel agents, real estate agents will be a dying a breed. They won’t die out completely, but there will be a lot less of them. We plan to capture a big chunk of the online real estate market with our cut throat pricing”, according to Khalili.
Property owners are encouraged to make a free BidSell.ca profile for their property today.
Media Contact:
Idea Labz Public Relations
1-877-4-IDEA LABZ
PR@IdeaLabz.com
Head Professor of USC’s Business/Entrepreneur Program Gets Added to Idea Labz Board of Directors
LOS ANGELES, CA (BUSINESS WIRE) – Idea Labz, Inc.,( www.IdeaLabz.com ) an Internet incubation and holding company with popular websites such as DiscountMore.com, BidRent.com, and BidSell.com, today announces a new addition to its board of directors.
Mr. William Bill Crookston, the head professor of the Business/Entrepreneur program at USC’s (University of Southern California) Marshall School of Business, is a new addition to the Idea Labz board of directors. “Mr. Crookston brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the team and validates us as a legitimate startup company ”, says Mike Ebrahimi, President and Co-CEO of Idea Labz.
Bobby Khalili, the company’s Founder and Chairman is happy to have someone as credible and experienced as Mr. Crookston onboard. “We are currently building our board of directors and we couldn’t have selected a better person than Mr. Crookston. He brings a sense of stability to the company and his years of experience in management and building companies from the ground up fit perfectly with Idea Labz”, says Mr. Khalili.
The company is currently speaking to several CEO’s and executives of publicly traded NASDAQ companies in order to have them join the board of directors. Mike Ebrahimi goes on further to say “In this day and age with Sarbanes Oxley and the difficulties of being in the public eye, most executives and people with status are hesitant to join boards of small start up companies. However, our innovative concepts and the potential they bring outweigh any potential risks. So far we have managed to gain a very well respected member of the Los Angeles business community and we plan to add several others as time goes on. Our revolutionary concepts and our team speak for themselves”.
Currently, Idea Labz has three revolutionary website concepts that have been receiving major press attention. DiscountMore.com; the first site to combine the results of the top comparison shopping sites all into one. BidRent.com; which is the first site to enable bidding on rental prices. BidSell.com; a site that enables bidding on real estate for sale.
For more information please contact:
Idea Labz Public Relations
1-877-4-IDEA LABZ
PR@IdeaLabz.com
RETRACTION Of The San Francisco Article Titled: Is BidRent.com The Priceline of Rental Properties or Just Smoke & Mirrors by Carol Lloyd
LOS ANGELES, CA (BUSINESS WIRE) – Idea Labz, Inc.,( www.IdeaLabz.com ) an Internet incubation and holding company with popular websites such as DiscountMore.com, BidRent.com, and BidSell.com, today announces its stance on an article written by a columnist hired by a competitor to tarnish the company’s good name.
On March 2, 2007 and March 4, 2007 a columnist named Carol Lloyd working for the San Francisco Chronicle published a slanderous article about BidRent.com and Idea Labz, Inc, along with its executives Bobby Khalili and Mike Ebrahimi.
The article’s were titled “Is BidRent.com the Priceline of rental properties or just smoke and mirrors?” and “More questions than answers at rentals Web site” both written by Carol Lloyd of the San Francisco Chronicle. “These articles were written without the consent of Idea Labz or its management team. Furthermore, the communication that took place according to the columnist never took place. The entire article was fabricated in order to slander both myself and my partner, Mike Ebrahimi” , states Bobby Khalili, the company’s Founder and Chairman.
The company has recently discovered ties between Miss Carol Lloyd and a competitor to BidRent.com. “We are under the impression that Miss Lloyd went to great lengths to personally slander the company because she was motivated by some type of compensation by one of our competitors. No moral and ethical columnist will go to the lengths that Miss Lloyd did to make sure that both executives of the company are slandered; and to even go as far as using a personal MySpace account in the article shows that Miss Lloyd had a personal vendetta against the company”, states Mr. Khalili.
Idea Labz is currently investigating the matter further and will be pursuing legal action against Miss Lloyd and the San Francisco Chronicle for slander.
Currently, Idea Labz has three revolutionary website concepts that have been receiving major press attention. DiscountMore.com; the first site to combine the results of the top comparison shopping sites all into one. BidRent.com; which is the first site to enable bidding on rental prices. BidSell.com; a site that enables bidding on real estate for sale.
For more information please contact:
Idea Labz Public Relations
1-877-4-IDEA LABZ
PR@IdeaLabz.com
LOS ANGELES, CA (BUSINESS WIRE) -- BidSell.com, a wholly-owned subsidiary of
Idea Labz, Inc. www.IdeaLabz.com -an Internet incubation and holding company, today launched the nation's first auction site targeting residential and commercial properties for sale.
Called "The eBay of real estate" by The New York Times, BidSell.com enables property owners, banks, and real estate agents to list commercial and residential properties for free, giving potential buyers the opportunity to vie for new living spaces within the context of the popular online auction format.
BidSell.com and its subsidiary Idea Labz, Inc. are both founded by Bobby Kalili - a Los Angeles based internet entrepreneur. According to Kalili, "Similar to eBay.com (NASDAQ: EBAY), BidSell.com enables potential sellers to list their property on an auction style forum and receive bids on the property without the help of costly broker/agents". The company plans to keep the service free to both sellers and buyers while focusing more on generating revenue from advertising.
BidSell.com enables owners to build unique profiles which bear descriptions and photographs of their showcased properties. In essence, property owners can make a free website for their property in order to make marketing the property easier. URL's correspond to property addresses, meaning www.BidSell.com/NY119ParkPlace would link to a property on 119 Park Place in New York. The company also offers a customized FOR SALE sign with the property's website URL printed on the sign.
BidSell.com claims they are first to market with a real estate auction site that gives property owners the tools to help sell their property without the use of an agent. The site offers property owners a free website for their property. Property owners afford all the marketing advantages of a dedicated website. According to Kalili, "eBay.com is the first to market with a real estate auction forum but they do not promote it. They offer no services to the seller such as dedicated websites for properties and customized For Sale signs".
Like its popular sister company, BidRent.com, Kalili feels that BidSell will be embraced by the real estate community. Although second to market after eBay, going head on with eBay while keeping the service free will encourage more listings and more transactions by the real estate community. With all of eBays success, popularity, and sheer dollar volume of transactions, they only have 340 real estate listings on the site. According to Kalili, "The $300+ listing fee eBay charges restricts them from growing in the niche. It must be kept free in order to encourage usage of the site and eventually become more liquid".
Kalili goes on further to say, "With BidSell.com profiles, buyers can browse, view pictures, leave messages and ask questions of the owners. The interested party may be inspired to make a casual offer. At that point, anything can happen."
BidSell.com will remain free of charge to users indefinitely. Kalili wants to encourage widespread use of the site, and subscribes to the notion that the most useful sites on the Net are offered at no cost.
"With real estate transactions at an all-time high, we firmly believe that BidSell.com will become a valuable commodity for everyone in the real estate community - from average Joe's and experienced investors to broker/agents and banks", says Kalili
The company plans to eventually start a brokerage division whereby offering sellers flat rate fees of $2,000 to list properties on the MLS. Buyers would receive 2/3 of the commission credited back to them. This type of cut throat pricing is what Kalili expects to happen in the near future. "Just like stock brokers and travel agents, real estate agents will be a dying a breed. They won't die out completely, but there will be a lot less of them. We plan to capture a big chunk of the online real estate market with our cut throat pricing", according to Kalili.
Property owners are encouraged to make a free BidSell.com profile for their property today.
Media Contact:
Robert Roth
Marketing Director
Idea Labz, Inc.
1-877-4-IDEA LABZ
PR@IdeaLabz.com
BIdRent.com does same for rental market -- National Real Estate Investor
Now a California entrepreneur has introduced an online auction website designed to help residential owners connect with tenants. BidRent.com is offering would-be tenants the right to competitively bid on rental properties, particularly building complexes that would otherwise go begging. The concept was created by web entrepreneur Bobby Khalili, who believes that the advent of online auctions for rental housing should further trim vacancy rates.
“Landlords sometimes overshoot on rental prices. As a result, properties remain unnecessarily vacant, and thousands of dollars in uncollected rent are lost,” says Khalili, who launched the site in late July. “People buy and sell nearly everything at online auctions, but the phenomenon stops abruptly at rental units.”
It remains to be seen if the online auction model will work for rentals. Buyers routinely bid below the list price on a new home, hoping that a motivated seller will jump at the offer. But apartment landlords aren’t known for entertaining lowball offers from a prospective tenant unless they are desperate to fill the space. Khalili hopes that apartment owners will use the BidRent site to list vacancies free of charge, which could lure prospective tenants to place “rental bids” on their units.
Since late summer, more than 800 landlords have posted properties on the site. The site also boasts roughly 1,100 registered users — bidders seeking rental units. The model could work well in weaker apartment markets where tenants wield the most clout But the national apartment vacancy rate registered a tight 6% at the end of September, according to Reis Inc., which suggests that most apartment owners are asking for, and getting, their desired rents.
10/26/2006 12:48:00 PM
Apartment Rent, Demand Is Soaring
By ALEX VEIGA AP Business Writer
Kristin Zimmerman went looking for a new apartment recently after someone broke into her unit in a converted Victorian house in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco.
She found a roomy, two-bedroom, two-bath dwelling on the edge of upscale Russian Hill, where the previous tenant had been paying $2,600 a month _ more than the $1,959 a month she and her roommate were spending but still within their limit.
The landlord, however, wanted $3,000 a month and wouldn't budge.
"The woman was just unrelenting," said Zimmerman, 26, a cancer researcher.
Apartment rents and demand are soaring nationwide as the economy produces good jobs and people who might have bought homes a year ago settle for apartments while they wait for housing prices to tumble.
In addition, the supply of rental housing tightened in the past year as many apartments were converted into condominiums in places like Florida and Southern California. Some of those units are now returning to rental markets at high prices as owners struggle to sell them.
In the quarter ended Sept. 30, the average advertised rent reached $978, up 3.9 percent over the year-ago period, according to an analysis of 75 markets by real estate research firm Reis Inc. in New York. Some of the biggest increases were seen in Florida and Southern California.
Meanwhile, the nationwide vacancy rate for rental housing dropped to 5.4 percent during the quarter from 6.7 percent in the same period of 2004.
"The market is strong enough that landlords are able to reduce the concessions that they're offering to new tenants," said Sam Chandan, Reis' chief economist. "Even more important, vacancies continue to fall."
Traditionally expensive rental markets such as New York City continue to see strong demand because so few new apartments go on the market and home ownership is beyond the reach of most people.
In Houston, the influx of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina helped push vacancy rates down from 10.8 percent to 6.3 percent. In smaller markets such as Portland, Ore., Richmond, Va., and Omaha, Neb., demand has outpaced development.
At Rent.com, the most-visited online rental listing service, searches have more than doubled this year over 2005 in the site's top 10 markets, which include Dallas, Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Detroit.
Many landlords are also listing on Los Angeles-based Bidrent.com, a subsidiary of YellowPages Online Corp. The Web site that launched officially in August pits would-be tenants in cities across the nation against each other in bidding wars.
Spokesman Robert Roth said the company doesn't keep track of auction outcomes, but some landlords have seen asking rents increase, albeit modestly, after using the site.
Property investor Rachel Morton recently listed a one-bedroom condo in the trendy Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles for $1,750 a month. An auction on BidRent involving at least seven people drove the price to $1,800 _ $100 higher than the previous tenant was paying.
"Although it was a minor increase, it was still an increase," said Morton. "It went fairly quickly. I was really surprised."
Harold Parton, another Los Angeles-based property investor, saw similar results.
He listed a two-bedroom, 1 1/2 bath apartment in North Hollywood for the rock-bottom price of $600, although he was hoping for $1,100. The ad drew about eight bidders, who eventually kicked up the price to $1,130.
Another Parton listing _ this one for a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in Westwood _ didn't yield a better price. Bidders ignored his rent-it-now price of $1,700 a month and only ratcheted up the price to $1,295 _ well short of his goal of $1,500.
"For me, the time factor is important," said Parton, who co-owns 24 rental units. "It's really supply and demand."
The surging demand has also benefited owners and operators of large apartment complexes, such as Alexandria, Va.-based AvalonBay Communities Inc., which has more than 41,000 rental units across the U.S. The company said its revenue rose 6.6 percent in the quarter ended June 30, compared to the same period last year.
Metropolitan areas of California, where the market for homes and condos has seen annual sales and price declines, have shown some of the biggest rent increases.
In five counties around the San Francisco Bay, rents rose 7.5 percent in the third quarter to an average of $1,443, according to Novato, Calif.-based research firm RealFacts Inc. In Southern California, the average rent paid in September in Los Angeles and Orange counties rose 7.4 percent to $1,546, RealFacts said.
Competition for units has grown along with the rent.
Zimmerman and her roommate, Camille Formosa, combed rental listings for about a month and put out feelers to friends while searching for a new place. They checked out at least 15 apartments _ but to no avail.
"You have open houses and there are like 15 to 20 people looking at the place," Zimmerman said. "Even in the places that are semi-decent, you have everyone going up there, getting an application, offering money to the landlord to take it."
_____
On the Net:
BidRent: http://www.bidrent.com
Rent.com: http://www.rent.com
___
Content Provided By A.P.
BidRent Revolutionizes the Rental Industry through New Bidding Concept
October 5, 2006 (Syndicated News) Every so often, a person comes along and revolutionizes a complete industry through the development of an innovative idea. Thomas Edison did it with the lighting industry in 1879. Henry Ford did it with the automobile industry in 1913. By all indications, BidRent founder Bobby Khalili looks to have done it with the rental property industry in 2006. Khalili's Web site, www.BidRent.com, is the world's first online auction site targeted exclusively at the housing and apartment rental market. Similar to the popular eBay Web site, BidRent allows potential renters to bid on nationwide rental properties listed on their Web site. Robert Roth, marketing director for BidRent, says the concept is revolutionary to the rental industry. "People negotiate prices on jewelry, cars, and other high-priced items all the time. In fact, it's almost expected that a person is going to negotiate on the price of a new home. Taking that into consideration, we decided that there's no reason people shouldn't be able to negotiate on a place they're going to rent."
How It Works
BidRent works by allowing interactions between landlords and renters across the country. Landlords simply post photographs (a minimum of 10), a property description, and a price for their property, and renters are allowed to browse through listings and place bids on individual units they're interested in. "It makes the search process really simple," says Roth. "All the details are at the fingertips of the renter." In addition to a basic property description, potential renters are given access to property addresses, lists of nearby schools, and lists of amenities. Landlords are also given the option to set a "rent it now" price--meaning a renter can opt to pay a set rental price without going through the bidding process.
Sharing the Benefits
Part of the popularity that BidRent has experienced thus far has come from the fact that the site benefits both landlords and renters alike. In today's competitive rental market, landlords often find themselves trapped in a situation where they're stuck with open units in high priced buildings. Renters similarly find themselves often passing-by units because of rental prices slightly out of their price range. By allowing renters to bid lower-than-standard rental prices on properties that are sitting open, landlords find themselves filling spaces and renters find themselves in a unit they know they can afford. "It's basically a win-win situation," says Roth. "There's none of the cutthroat, backstabbing type deals going on here since its all done through a monitored Web site." BidRent, a service provided by Yellow Pages Online, allows landlords to list their properties free-of charge; renters are also able to search the site for free. "As an added bonus, BidRent offers landlords a free Web site for their rental property along with a customized for rent sign that has the property's Web site address printed on it," adds Roth. "This saves landlords a lot of time and hassle during the renting process."
Going Once, Going Twice ... Two Bedrooms, One Bathroom
By DANIEL MILLER
Los Angeles Business Journal Staff
A Los Angeles Internet mogul claims his company's new Web site is an amalgamation of eBay and MySpace for rental property owners. And even though some are skeptical, the site does have the potential of altering the way rental property is matched up with renters.
According to Bobby Khalili, BidRent.com is the first auction site that targets apartment, house, vacation, and office rentals.
Khalili, founder and chief executive of YellowPages Online Corp., launched BidRent in mid-July, with the notion that prospective renters would bid on apartments. Sometimes, renters bid up rents higher than the asking price.
Khalili said that the site has exceeded his expectations with about 1,000 unique Internet users visiting the site daily.
"I get e-mails once a week from people saying they love the concept, asking what took us so long," Khalili said. "There has been great response from landlords and from tenants."
Access to the site is free for landlords and renters. Khalili plans to generate revenue through ad sales once the site gets more popular.
Like eBay - the best-known online marketplace - the site features auctions where buyers are given the option of paying the market-rate rent landlords set, or bidding on rentals at rates that start below market value. And like the online community Myspace, users are given their own Web pages. On BidRent, sellers are automatically given Web sites that feature their listings, making it easy to direct prospective renters to information about their properties.
"I like the fact I can send a quick Web address to anyone who is interested and they can see everything there is to see about the property," said Aaron Sackiew, an Edmonton, Canada, property owner who is using the site to rent an apartment in Phoenix.
Khalili said that about 800 landlords have registered to post properties on the site and about 1,100 people have registered for the site as renters.
Raman Nouri, a Los Angeles-based property owner, rented a condo to a BidRent user who bid on Nouri's Hollywood property. Nouri said that the entire process took one week, and three people placed legitimate bids on the condo.
The site does not create binding contracts between sellers and high bidders -- it merely facilitates communication between prospective renters and landlords.
Nouri said the renter will pay $2,000 a month for the condo, and added that the price is above what he expected to get for the property. Nouri listed the property at about $1,700.
"It was very easy to use," Nouri said. "I'm surprised something like this hasn't been around before."
Nouri received a few "extremely low bids." It seemed to him like someone was "playing around" with the site.
Anthony Yannatta, WestsideRentals.com's chief executive, said that BidRent lacks a filtering mechanism to keep non-serious bidders and pranksters from posting. Los Angeles-based Westside Rentals, which currently has about 14,000 listings in Southern California, requires prospective renters to pay $60 for a 60-day membership to the site. Westside doesn't feature auctions, however.
"We think the flaw in the model is that the people who are engaged in the process aren't invested in it," Yannatta said.
Rachel Morton recently used Khalili's site to rent out a Venice apartment for $1,700 a month. She likes both Westside Rentals and BidRent and hasn't had any problems. "So far with BidRent, I'm getting people who are making commitments to the price they bid.
"Khalili came up with the idea for the site in December, after he advertised to rent two Phoenix properties using Craigslist.org's classified advertising.
He knew that similar houses were renting for about $1,300 a month, but wanted to rent his properties quickly and posted them for about $850. When Khalili got offers on both rentals for $900 he changed his approach and turned the process into an auction. One property was bid up to $1,150, and the other reached $1,250.
Since BidRent went live, Khalili has used it to rent two of his other properties.
"As a landlord, sometimes you overshoot on the asking rent price and the rentals stay empty," Khalili said. "If someone were to offer a landlord a little less maybe they would take it, but people don't have the psychology to place a bid on a rental place. This opens that door.
"Morton said that she currently has another Venice property listed on the site, and plans to put others on it. She also posts rental listings on Craigslist and with the Los Angeles Times, and she said that BidRent has become an attractive option.
"The price I got for the Venice two-bedroom was totally phenomenal and really close to what I was looking for," Morton said. "I didn't have to compromise. This really tailors to the rental community."
BidRent.com Adds New Features to Rental Property Auction Site
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)----BidRent.com, a wholly-owned subsidiary of YellowPages Online Corporation, has added new features to its popular rental auction site that will make the process of filling vacancies even easier.
Called the "eBay of rental properties," BidRent.com now augments every rental listing with a free promotional website. These sites consolidate all property info into one convenient location, ensuring that potential tenants have easy access to the listing's most important attributes -- every amenity, every unique selling point.
BidRent founder Bobby Khalili is certain the new standalone websites will dramatically decrease vacancy rates, increase owner profits and save time for the landlord.
"The web pages include photographs, neighborhood information and more. One look gives tenants a full picture of every property, inside and out. Further, the web addresses of each site are easy to remember because they match each property's physical address. For example, if your listing is located on 11 Park Place, the web address will be www.BidRent.com/11ParkPlace," said Khalili.
Individual websites are even easier to find because BidRent.com is now offering For Rent signs with every listing. Attractive and custom-made, the signs can be posted in front of any property, and include the landlord's contact phone, as well as the property's website address.
Offered Khalili, "This speeds up the rental process. Tenants no longer have to worry about waiting until business hours to learn valuable property information. Everything is on the site and can be accessed 24/7. You can even place a bid from there!"
For owners and property managers, the new BidRent sites make phone calls from apartment seekers more targeted, so less time is wasted.
Since the launch of the site last month the traffic has been growing by 100% each week, and BidRent popularity has been expanding.
"We are most pleased with the growth of the site," said Khalili. "We're committed to revolutionizing the way people view rental properties, and the way properties are rented. It's 2006, after all, and it's about time properties had their own dedicated site presence."
To fill your vacancies fast, visit www.BidRent.com or email info@BidRent.com today.
BidRent.com Robert Roth, 1-866-4-BIDRENT x102
Entrepreneur Sees Hot Opportunity If Housing Mkt Freezes
By Janet Morrissey
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
957 words
28 August 2006
14:48
Dow Jones News Service
English
(c) 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Bobby Khalili is betting on a windfall in rental properties if the nation's housing market crashes.
The 29-year-old West Los Angeles entrepreneur just started BidRent.com, dubbing it the "eBay of rental properties" because the Web site allows people to place bids on single-family homes and apartments they would like to rent.
Basically, potential tenants who visit the site have the option of paying the market rent that a landlord lists or to start bidding at a minimum rental rate set by the landlord, which is typically at least 25% below the market rate.
Khalili, founder and financier of the site, came up with the idea about eight months ago when he was trying to find renters for some properties he owned in Phoenix. "After I purchased them, I wanted to rent them right away and not have them sit empty," said Khalili. Average rents in Phoenix were about $1,300-a-month at the time, but Khalili said he was willing to accept as low as $900 just to get them rented. So, he placed an auction-like ad on Craigslist, setting the minimum rent at $900, and asking people to bid on how much they would be willing to spend on rent.
"Lo and behold, it worked!" he said. "For weeks, I was getting emails all day long - and eventually I rented out all the properties for $1,150 and over - which was far more than [the $900] I wanted."
"This gave me the concept that people in this country will bid on rents," he said.
With traditional ads, most renters are reluctant to respond to ads that ask for rents that are 25% above their budget. "They figure it's out of their range," he said. Yet, some landlords might welcome a lower offer, especially if a property has been sitting empty for some time.
As a result, BidRent.com was born. "It offers a forum where landlords can place their properties on the site, and tenants can bid on them," he said. Landlords are required to post at least 10 photos and a full description of each property. Bidders have the option of contacting the landlord directly, just as they do on eBay, for more information or to see the property in person. Khalili is considering adding commercial properties and short-term vacation rentals to the Web site.
Since the site kicked off in mid-July, it has grown weekly: It currently gets between 600 and 800 unique visitors daily, and includes auctions on about 700 properties in about 200 different markets across the country, according to Khalili.
Khalili sees the biggest opportunities coming from overbuilt markets, such as Miami, Phoenix, San Diego, and Las Vegas, where overbuilding and a pullback in home-buying demand could cause a glut of properties to be dumped onto the market for rent. "BidRent.com could come in really handy in places like that because there is no true market price, because there's so many of them," he said.
Khalili is bracing for a housing-market crash in at least several markets.
"I think the bubble will pop in certain markets between now and 18 months from now," he predicts. "Within the next year, I think we're going to see a lot of foreclosures," which could provide a buying opportunity for investors, including himself, he said.
Unlike brokerage sites, Khalili's site allows landlords to post ads free of charge, and potential tenants can access the ads without any fee. Khalili expects to make money from the site when he seeks advertisers later this year.
Khalili isn't new to the Internet or real estate worlds. As a high-school student in 1996, he used cash advances from his credit cards to scrape together the money needed to be a grassroots investor in a small Internet startup venture called Go2Net, which took off during the tech boom. The company wound up being sold to InfoSpace in July 2000 for $4 billion. Khalili himself pocketed around $50 million in the deal, but wound up losing the bulk of it during the tech crash.
"I was very young - my mid-20s - and when you slap money like that into a young kid's hands without any knowledge of investing, it's a very dangerous thing," he said. "As luck would have it, I lost most of it. But that gave me the craving to start my own Internet concept."
Still, part of his proceeds from the Go2Net sale was reinvested into residential real estate in Phoenix and Las Vegas, where he continues to own about 10 properties, which include apartment buildings and single-family homes. He also put money into Internet domain names and in the creation of two sister sites - YellowPagesServices.com and DiscountMore.com - prior to launching BidRent.com.
To date, BidRent.com's growth has come primarily through word-of-mouth and small ads placed on Craigslist and myspace.com. However, plans are in the works to launch a major radio and Internet ad campaign in mid-September. Khalili is also seeking venture-capital investors to help in the site's advertising.
When traffic to the site reaches a higher threshold, Khalili plans to open it up to advertising in each of the markets that are on the site. But he is willing to wait in order to maximize the advertising revenue.
"I'll probably start doing that in the November/December timeframe when there's more traffic on the site and we're more known," he said.
-By Janet Morrissey, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-2118 [ 08-28-06 1548ET ]
BidRent.com Launches "The eBay of Rental Properties"
LOS ANGELES, CA. -- BidRent.com, a wholly-owned subsidiary of YellowPages Online Corporation, today launched the world's first auction site targeting apartment and house rentals in the U.S.
Called the "eBay & Priceline of rental properties" by The New York Times, BidRent.com enables landlords to list vacancies for free, giving potential tenants the opportunity to vie for new living spaces within the context of the popular online auction format.
Founded by Bobby Khalili and financed by Bobby Khalili Ventures (www.BobbyKhalili.com), this new approach to rental listing reduces vacancy rates by letting the market set the price. Similar to eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) and Priceline (Nasdaq: PCLN) BidRent.com enables potential tenants to set their own price on the monthly rent.
"Landlords sometimes overshoot on rental prices," offers Khalili. "As a result, properties remain unnecessarily vacant, and thousands of dollars in uncollected rent are lost. People buy and sell nearly everything at online auctions, but the phenomenon stops abruptly at rental units. Lessees rarely contact apartment owners to offer lower-than-listed rental prices."
Khalili points to the buyer's market, where the opposite is true: Bidding below list price on a new home purchase is not unusual-it's the norm.
"Renting shouldn't be any different. Landlords are open to negotiations, especially when faced with losing out on another month's rent. BidRent.com draws fresh lines of communication between owner and tenant."
BidRent.com also offers www.YourPropertySpace.com , dubbed "The MySpace of Real Estate," again by The Times. With a forum similar to the popular MySpace.com community, it enables owners to build unique profiles which bear descriptions and photographs of their showcased properties. In essence, landlords can make a free website for their property in order to make marketing the property easier.
With YourPropertySpace.com and BidRent.com, property owners afford all the marketing advantages of a dedicated website. URLs correspond to property addresses, meaning www.BidRent.com/NY119ParkPlace would link to a property on 119 Park Place in New York.
Says Khalili, "With BidRent.com profiles, tenants and buyers can browse, view pictures, leave messages and ask questions of the owners. The interested party may be inspired to make a casual offer. At that point, anything can happen."
BidRent.com will remain free of charge to both landlords and tenants. Khalili wants to encourage widespread use of the site, and subscribes to the notion that the most useful sites on the Net are offered at no cost.
"With real estate transactions at an all-time high, we firmly believe that BidRent.com will become a valuable commodity for everyone in real estate-from average Joe's to rental property magnates."
To find your next dream home-or to fill your empty units fast-visit www.BidRent.com today.
Media Contact:
Robert Roth - Marketing Director
1-866-4-BIDRENT x102
Info@BidRent.com
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