Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Real estate startup Rentalutions closed on a $2 million funding round late last month, announcing it plans to use the money to reduce the time and headache of property management. The online rental process platform is aimed at "do-it-yourself landlords", and will add features such as maintenance request management, tenant screening and payment processing to its platform.
Rentalutions reckons there are around 8 million independent landlords renting out around 24 million listings in the U.S., so it has quite a large target market. Currently, over 30,000 of them use the company's platform for property listings, applicant screening, customized leading and more. The idea is to cut out the middleman as it removes the need to hire a property manager.
Rentalutions latest round adds to the $1 million it previously raised. Cultivation Capital spearheaded this financing round, which was joined by M25 Group and Sandalphon Capital. General Partner Cliff Holekamp, also a landlord, noted Rentulations is modernizing how do-it-yourself landlords, often without experience and resources, manage their rental properties.
“It’s refreshing to see someone tackling the challenges we face with one comprehensive solution,” Holekamp said in a press release. “Cultivation Capital looks forward to continuing to support Rentalutions as they grow and scale.”
Co-founder and CEO Ryan Coon launched Rentalutions in 2012 as an all-in-one solution to simplify property management for small-time landlords like himself. “Our vision is to ease headaches for independent landlords at a lower cost than a property manager. This investment will help us continue to do that at greater scale, while developing new tools for landlords and their tenants.”
The cloud-based platform is designed to automate and simplify the rental cycle, and syncs rental listings with websites like ApartmentFinder, Trulia, and Zillow, and includes tenant screening tools, digital leasing, and more.
Mike, accounting is a very small part of what property managers do. The reason owners hire and pay for a property manager is they can not or do not want the responsibility of dealing with contractors and tenants. How you or the property manager responds determine if your tenant renews or not. The major cost of property ownership is not the management fee but the cost of vacancy and turnover. Software does not replace a high touch approach to solving tenant and property issues.