Rent.com.au has listed on the Australia Securities Exchange after a backdoor takeover of former copper, gold and nickel explorer Select Exploration.
Rent.com.au has raised $5 million in new equity, at 20¢ a share. In opening morning trade it was at 21 cents.
The site, which markets itself as the home for rentals, claims about 80% of national real estate agent rental listings.
There will be 88 million shares on issue, with the newly raised capital representing 28.4% of Rent.com.au.
Since 2007 the company has invested more than $10 million in developing technology, content and alliances, according to The Australian Financial Review.
The website received about 230,000 unique visitors a month, with its intention to expand into Asia.
The rental property market in Australia:
30% of Australia’s population (7 million people) rent;
primarily key 18-35 demographic;
Over 2.6 million rental properties in Australia;
1.4 million properties managed by ~10,000 property agencies;
1.2 million properties self-managed by ~1 million non-agent landlords;
Average lease turnover is ˂12 months;
3 million annual rental transactions represents 5x the number of home sales;
44% of real estate agency revenue is derived from property management;
Over 50% of all rental advertising is offline; non-agent landlords traditionally advertise in print media and other offline sources.
Rent.com.au is currently a top 10 national property website with 55,000 active property listings and 6,000 national property rental agencies registered.
Around 50% of traffic is now via mobile or tablet.
The RNT website is targeting one million renters to its site within five years, with transactions between $15 and $40 per service.
Its rental pricing notes $219 for a three day newspaper run vs $99 for a 4 week rent.com.au listen saying rent.com.au offers a unique audience: as 45% of its traffic does not go to realestate.com.au and 60% does not go to domain.com.au.
A third of Australians are currently renting property, but a new Nielsen report from Domain.com.au has revealed that the Northern Territory has the highest percentage of renters in the country (43%), followed by Queensland (37%).
While the Sydney and Melbourne property markets are the most talked about in the country, the percentage of people renting in the states is significantly lower, with more renters in NSW (33%) than in Victoria (28%).
Tasmania has the lowest percentage of renters in the country with only a fifth (20%) of the state currently renting.
The Domain data suggests that renting is a temporary, transitory experience, highlighted by 47% of Australians having lived in their current rental property for less than two years.
Only 27% of Australians have been in their rental property for more than five years.
Percentage of renters, by state:
