Australian rental portal and end-to-end specialist Rent.com.au has announced that it has signed an agreement with prominent rental management agency Rental Management Australia (RMA). The partnership will see RMA use and promote Rent.com.au's flagship rental payments solution RentPay and include it in its leasing process.
Founded in Western Australia in 2007, Rent.com.au is an ASX listed company that started life as a rentals portal. In recent years the company has turned its attention towards offering adjacent products and simplifying the process of renting in Australia.
Apart from offering a move-now-pay-later product, an ID and history check product and a renter and pet resumé, the company also operates its RentPay product which allows renters to make and track payments, set reminders and build up a payment credit history.
RentPay was launched in May, several years after its original conception and after 18 months of development. The company has put a lot of eggs in the RentPay basket with development costs of $698k and $273k spent on launching and optimising the product according to its July quarterly report.
Now the product is in the marketing and growth phase with partnerships with rental agencies high on the priority list according to Rent.com.au CEO Greg Bader:
“With our goal of making RentPay the leading renter-driven payment platform, it’s easy to overlook that
RentPay makes life so much easier for property managers,”“The reality is that there are significant benefits to property managers whose tenants use RentPay to pay their rent. When renters are better able to plan and manage their rental payments and are rewarded for a having great payment history then agents save time and hassle because of a lower need to chase up late payments. In addition, agents with multiple renters using RentPay will receive daily pay files which can be directly uploaded into their CRM/trust accounting system to automate reconciliations. We’re also working with several leading trust accounting providers to facilitate automation. Case studies
“RentPay has signed similar collaboration agreements with a number of franchise property management offices throughout Australia and that is something we’re keen to do more of."
Rent.com.au's core portal business has been profitable since FY21 Q1 and the company will likely now be focussing on marketing RentPay to individual tenants as well as rental agencies, a group that already accounts for 7,500 renters on the platform according to a press release.