Rent com au : Renter Resume Hits 150,000 - Suburb Reviews Launched

ASX Announcement

15 August 2017

Rent.com.au Limited (ASX: RNT) ("RENT" or "the Company"), Australia's Number 1 website dedicated to rental property, is pleased to announce the launch of "Suburb Reviews" and update that its Renter Resume feature has now exceeded the 150,000 milestone.

Key Highlights:

 More than 150,000 Renter Resumes created in under 10 months

 RENT launches new "Suburb Reviews" feature

 Improvements in customer engagement increases revenue potential, drives down costs

Renter Resume Passes 150,000 In Less Than 10 Months

"Renter Resume continues to be a real focus for us because it is a logical product to understand and every day it is used by our customers to help secure their next home," said RENT CEO Greg Bader. "I feel we owe it to our customers to keep innovating and driving the adoption of Renter Resume because the combination of simplicity (enter your information only once) and functionality (stand out, incorporate other services) is unmatched in the industry, but there is much more we intend to do to enhance this product."

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RENT Launches Suburb Reviews Feature

"The popularity of this new feature has taken us a little by surprise," said Mr Bader. "We know that when people are looking for their next home they want to know what their new suburb is like. That's why we launched our 'try before you buy' association with Airbnb a year ago, and more recently Walk Score and NBN Status.

"The latest innovation in this space is our Suburb Review feature that was only launched 2 weeks ago. Already we have had renters complete more than 12,500 reviews, covering more than 2,000 different

suburbs and we expect this to quickly become one the country's richest sources of data for the suburbs we live in. I guess we should have expected this, our renter community is very engaged and this is another example of how this group is active in supporting each other."

"The feedback we were getting was that our customers wanted a way to share their experiences about suburbs with others. That point really resonated with us; we are a community that revolves around people moving to new areas, so providing the tools for customers to be better informed was a no brainer".

A key feature of Suburb Reviews is that it provides an incredibly useful source of 'real world' feedback. Statistics can still play a part in suburb selection of course but with Suburb Reviews, RENT has direct input from people who are currently living (or have lived) in those areas. They are the ones that know the local highlights and are in the best place to provide a review or recommendation.

"Naturally everyone has different expectations and different needs, so building a model that could be used to compare across suburbs and be independent of cost was important for us," continued Mr Bader.

"We did not want a situation where affordable areas were perceived differently (or prejudiced) against wealthier areas because, while housing affordability is a big concern, every suburb in Australia is different and every location has something to offer".

The RENT Suburb Review model is perfect for this, both with its simplicity and the obvious benefit of real people providing their thoughts. When a customer reviews their suburb, they simply select the attributes that they believe best apply to their location and RENT collates the information with other reviews for that suburb to display the current "top 3" features that its customers have selected.

Improved Customer Engagement

"We will continue developing features that simplify the renting process, either through automating outdated processes or helping renters to make better informed decisions," said Mr Bader.

"Not only is this the right thing to do, but it is also in our interest as business. Since embarking on this strategy 12 months ago we have seen significant growth in the proportion of our visitors coming from organic rather than being paid for, which delivers savings of more than $100,000 per month.

"More importantly, we're also seeing those visitors do more - they're spending more time on our website, using more of our products and services and making more enquiries and submitting online applications all of which continues to drive increases in our revenue. We're making inroads and are rapidly approaching a tipping point," concluded Mr Bader.

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realestate.com.au rent.com.au Domain

Source: Nielsen Market Intelligence Reports July 2017 and July 2016, Google Analytics

ENDS

Our rental only positioning allows RNT to legitimately advocate for renting and renters.