When there wasn’t a rental market, do you recall how people met with brokers to select a home to buy? Or do they reserve a hotel room for a quick trip?
Renting a property was significant until the first rental marketplace was created.
Thanks to the rental marketplace industry, consumers can discover housing in just a few clicks.
Over 36% of millennials live in rental housing in the USA.
Due to COVID-19, working conditions have also changed at the same time. In 2021, more than 70% of workers began doing so—more people than ever spend their time at home today. So we’re ready to upgrade their living situation. The need for using marketplaces among businesses will increase as a result.
We’ll go through how to create a rental marketplace, its essential features, potential monetization strategies, key development milestones, and pricing in more detail in this article.
What Is A Rental Marketplace?
An online rental marketplace is a platform where people or businesses exchange offers to rent various lodgings.
The most well-known marketplaces include Airbnb, Vrbo, Breather, and WeWork.
Airbnb
Airbnb is a peer-to-peer vacation rental app from the United States.
Airbnb allows its consumers to reserve experiences in addition to real estate accommodations.
Activities like cooking with locals, going on excursions, and taking tours led by locals are all examples of experiences. Along with their lodging, the guests must make reservations for such activities.
Vrbo
Another American peer-to-peer renting marketplace is Vrbo.
The business describes itself as a family marketplace that aids in finding a location to unwind, reconnect, and enjoy time together.
Breather
Breather is an online marketplace where people can rent out workspaces. Flexible time frames allow for the reservation of offices for hours, days, or even months.
Offices, conference rooms, and locations with upscale amenities are all included in the service offered everywhere.
How To Build A Rental Platform?
We advise picking a solution type before beginning the product development process, followed by a discovery phase, and ultimately choosing the best technology stack you may require for subsequent product development.
Selecting A Type of Marketplace Solution: Personalized or Ready-made
Ready-made Solutions:
The premade marketplace solutions are ideal for the speedy construction of smaller marketplace initiatives.
Use open-source and free construction tools, for instance, when you know the platform you’re building will be modest or just required for a free and quick depiction of the product idea.
The ready-made free scripts, however, aren’t appropriate for products that require
- future customization
- feature expansion.
- scaling capacity
- handling heavy loads
Custom Solutions
Projects involving online marketplaces that require specialized business logic and adaptable marketplace features can benefit from bespoke development.
Generally speaking, while building a marketplace, custom marketplace development may require more time, money, and fees than any ready-made alternative. The time needed to develop a rental marketplace MVP is shown below as a preliminary estimation.
However, as a consequence, it will be a fully functional marketplace with an architecture and features that are tailored to your company’s requirements.
Discovery Phase Execution
You can start the exploration phase after deciding the marketplace solution type for the upcoming peer-to-peer rental marketplace.
The discovery phase entails a thorough examination of the product concept, a study of the product specifications, and an assessment of potential obstacles and solutions.
You’ll be able to begin comprehending the after it analyzes the:
- Product’s market
- Core objectives
- Platform architecture
- Technology stack
- Appropriate scope
- Potential difficulties or restrictions
- Product Attributes
- User experience
- Wireframes
Choose The Best Technology Stack
Your organization should concentrate on MVP growth when you are just beginning to establish a rental marketplace.
At first glance, it appears that practically any technology may be used to begin constructing an MVP. Looking more closely reveals that selecting the appropriate tech stack for a marketplace should take into account several factors.
You will require the following technologies to get started:
Scalable
Ensure your marketplace MVP only has the essential functionality when you design it.
However, you’ll undoubtedly need to develop more extra features after launch and in the future.
Prepared For Heavy Loads
Extensive databases and a lot of users are the foundation of rental marketplaces.
When creating such a platform, it is preferable to select reliable and prepared technologies to manage the many users and tons of data you will require for your business.
What Is The Price Of Building A Rental Platform?
The number of features and their complexity significantly impacthow much it costs to construct a rental marketplace platform. The elements of a rental platform’s minimal viable product (MVP) are as follows, based on our experience with similar projects:
- Authentification
- Find Properties
- Property
- Booking
- Reviews
- Profile
- Admin panel
- Notification
- Integrations
For a rental platform with all of these characteristics, the MVP construction starts at $40,000.
The Business Model Of Rental Marketplace
Ensure you understand how to monetize your marketplace and consider its business model payments before you begin constructing it.
Fees, advertising, and premium features are the three monetization models that are most frequently used.
Fees
The marketplaces impose transaction fees for payments.
For instance, levies fees on both hosts and guests. For each successful booking, they typically receive a fee payment (generally around 3%).
The renters must also pay non-refundable service fees, typically 15%.
For instance: Redfin and irbnb.
Ads
Advertising is a fantastic way to monetize the business models of rental marketplaces. Nobody, however, enjoys too many advertisements. Consider advertising your future monetization strategy and only implement it once you have a committed following.
It’s excellent to work with other businesses, such as vehicle rental agencies or providers of tourist activities, and display their advertisements on the rent platform in exchange for additional payment of money.
For instance, Trulia and Zillow.
High-End Services
Rental markets might make money by charging for premium services that provide more functionality.
For instance, if it is a marketplace for holiday rentals, it is conceivable to generate premium listings of the newest housing or provide members with tourist activities they may need once they lease a house for an additional fee.
For instance, Zillow, Trulia, Housing.com, and Redfin.
Final Reflections
These days, there is a significant market demand for rental markets. And even if it could seem like a lengthy path at first, it is still worthwhile to begin.
Furthermore, if your goals are established, and you know the measures to take, it is simpler to begin developing a rental marketplace. We suggest:
Select the sort of solution from ready-made software or specialized platform development. Starting at $40K, the customized solution can be developed in 4 months.
Conduct the discovery phase to learn more about the key rivals, the target market, and the marketplace objectives.
Identify the technological stack for greater platform flexibility, scalability, and quicker development.
Make a list of features to give an MVP rental marketplace platform access to all required website capabilities.