Real estate listing search site Nestio, founded as a way for apartment hunters to organize their hunting, relaunched this morning with a new, much more landlord-focused approach to the rental market. The big idea: make it easier for landlords who still have old-school organizational practices (like whiteboards and faxes) to embrace technology and work with brokers. An admirable goal, and something of a new approach in the crowded rental search site market.
Nestio CEO and co-founder Caren Maio gave us a tour of the site interface, designed for ease of landlord use. The company will input landlords' listings from the landlords' current paper or stone tablet records, and once a landlord logs into Nestio, he or she can sort those listings by rented vs. available, lease expiration date, and other criteria and view the applicant details for any pending deals. Nestio will also send e-mail blasts of available listings to brokers.
For now, the site is meant to connect landlords and brokers, with no involvement from the renters ultimately looking for these apartments. That's intentional: landlords prefer to work with brokers, Maio points out, because they don't have time to deal with prospective tenants. Nestio is free for landlords but charges a subscription fee for brokers, some of whose legwork is eliminated by the site. (Nestio invites landlords to get in touch.)
The site addresses some of the difficulties of tracking the rental market, and we hope the listings, and any data they can generate, will someday be available directly to renters and the public. Even if landlords opt not to give up their broker middlemen, everyone involved in the renting process stands to benefit from more information.
· Official site: Nestio [nestio.com]
· Nestio coverage [Curbed]