Yelena's Blog

Zilpy Blog - The Rental Market Trends

2008-04-27T09:41:18Z

I been bloggin here about Zilpy for the past 4 month, not doing it on regular basis due to a lot of other commitments. I have been pushing my zilpy team to help me out with some blogging to spread word about our service. Now that we have released our widgets, that can be customized to any city, neighborhood, state or any level you desire to get statistics, we finally decided to put our own blog on line.

http://www.zilpyblog.com/ and our Blog was born.

There are a lot of blogs about real estate for sale and It was about time somebody started writing about rental market. We are always looking for your feedback about our articles as well as what would you like to hear next.

Have something to say about rental market? want to write and article? Looking for rental stats for your own city? want to put local widget on your site? Looking for a widget you cant create with Zilpy right now? Please reach out to me and we will make it happen.

Here is a sneak peek on the upcoming posts:

- How did James and Mike, co-eds, save a weekend looking for an affordable place to rent for the next year

- Rental market is melting, should I rent or buy? See top 10 metro rent vs. buy special report comparing rent and sale numbers

Please don’t forget to subscribe to our blog to get notified of new posts.

Create your own RENTAL market widget!

2008-04-24T13:43:51Z

Today Zilpy released a new Tool, RENTAL MARKET WIDGET BUILDER!!! Now you can build your own custom widget of the rental market or you can select the most expensive or least expensive metropolitan area and put it on your site. It is really easy to create. Here are some examples of what you can do. Here is the direct link http://www.zilpy.com/widgets

One stop place to post to Kijiji, Craigslist, Vast and many more ....http://www.postlets.com

2008-04-09T16:55:12Z

Have you heard of postlets, it is a one stop shop to post your listing for rent or for Sale.

This is an excellent site that allows you to post your listing for rent or for sale, upload your pictures and in an instante your listing goes to several very visited sites and has a very nice presentation.

Give it a try

http://www.postlets.com

PR: Trulia's Publisher Platform into Zilpy’s rent heatmaps

2008-04-09T08:22:35Z

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 04/0408/2008

Looking to rent or to buy a house? Now you can do both on Zilpy.com

San Francisco, CA April 8th, 2008 -- Today Zilpy, a leader in online rental market information, and Trulia, a leader in residential real estate search, announced a partnership to integrate Trulia's Publisher Platform into Zilpy’s rent heatmaps.

“This partnership gives our audience the ability to see houses available for sale and for rent in one place. Zilpy is now able to provide an integrated shopping experience to better address the needs of the Investor community and also consumers who are exploring Rent vs. Buy options” says Yelena Drabkin.

“We’re very excited by the Zilpy implementation of the Trulia Publisher Platform,” said Rob Cross, Director of Distribution for Trulia. “The Trulia platform gives publishers a great new way to deliver real estate search directly from their websites and Zilpy provides a valuable resource for people looking to compare rentals and purchases.”

Under the partnership, Zilpy rent heat map pages now include a “For sale” feature that quickly exposes the market inventory on Trulia for any location in the United States. Users can narrow their search from the city location down to neighborhoods and even specific zip codes.

For example, if you are looking at rental heat maps for 3 bedroom single family homes on Zilpy, you are one click away from seeing real estate for sale in same area.

“We look forward into adding more value to the Zilpy.com service via our partnership with Trulia” says Drabkin

About Zilpy.com:

Zilpy.com is a free online rental market facts and analysis service dedicated to help renters and investors make better rental and investment decisions. Whether looking for a good and affordable area to rent, fair rental market value for a specific property, or potential investment properties, Zilpy.com helps renters, landlords and investors understand real rental market trends in specific areas of interest from neighborhood to city or state level.

Contact:

Mrs. Yelena Drabkin, VP of Marketing

Zilpy LLC

http://www.zilpy.com/

###

Features, features, features

2008-04-03T09:47:08Z

We are pleased to announce that realeased new features on our site. We receive a lot of feedback from our users and working very hard to incorporate it.

Now users have an ability to

see historical listings vs active listings
links back to some of our data sources and working to add links for all of the listings

http://www.zilpy.com/US/California/San_Francisco_County/San_Francisco/Mission/Rentals/

Rent vs Buy options

2008-04-03T08:23:23Z

Yeeeee!

We are very excited to announce our relationship with Trulia and today Trulia announced in their blog that Zilpy won the "Most Creative Integration"

http://www.truliablog.com/?p=354

Now Zilpy's user's can not only look up rental stats but also look for houses for sale.

http://www.zilpy.com/US/California/San_Francisco_County/San_Francisco/

Did you order Zilpy Rent TO GO?

2008-03-18T11:15:36Z

In today’s world, everywhere you go you see people on their blackberries, and not using it only as a phone, but the thing that runs their lives. We don’t leave the house without our blackberries, can you imagine going on vacation and not having it…..you would feel so left out…..

I was driving around my neighborhood and as I see signs FOR RENT I wonder, what would the ZILPY RENT be….that’s when it came to me it would be great to put Zilpy on mobile and the next thing I know our tech team made it happen and www.zilpy.mobi was born.

Next time you are driving around and looking for that next place to rent or make it your investment property, give www.zilpy.mobi a try and of course let us know what you think!

Real Estate Radio?

2008-02-22T09:32:29Z

As buzz about zilpy is growing, we are talking to a lot of reporters from various parts of USA.

http://www.squidoo.com/zilpy

http://www.realestateinfostl.com/blogs/karen_goodman/archive/2008/02/11/find-the-most-wealthy-and-poverty-stricken-parts-of-town-in-any-city.aspx

Yesterday we had an interview, live interview with Real Estate Radio.

www.realestateradiousa.com

If you haven't heard of them i suggest you check them out. The are on LIVE WEEKDAYS 4:00PM-6:00PM. EST

They are fairly new, but very friendly and knowledgeable investors based in Florida:-) I been listening to them myself for few weeks here. They also have a blog http://www.realestateradiousa.com/blog/

While you are on their blog listen to my first ever interview about ZILPY :-)

http://www.realestateradiousa.com/blog/2008/02/21/real-estate-radio-usa-episode-64/

Neighborhoods, Neighborhoods, Neighborhoods.....

2008-02-11T16:38:03Z

Past weeks were busy weeks for us at ZILPY. With our launch we got a lot of great media exposure and a lot of feedback from users, which we are very grateful for. We have been working hard on incorporating user’s feedback as well as integrating Zillow’s neighborhood API. Now when you come to ZILPY and look up San Francisco we you will see how it is nicely broken down on neighborhoods and you can take if from there and drill down to the next level.

In summary what out ZILPY team was able to accomplish for the past few weeks:

- We added Neighborhood support

- Now you can see the top 100 Rentals for any City, Zip or Neighborhood. Click in the map at the bottom of the label or on the rental count in the table underneath the map

- Opened up the API to get property Rent estimates (in beta)

- Speed and minor usability improvements

Why ZILPY?

2008-02-06T18:30:43Z

Since ZILPY launched everybody has questions about who we are? Who is behind ZILPY.

Let me just say that we are not professional real estate brokers nor agents. However, we have an advisory board that consists from real estate professional, lawyers and entrepreneurs. Our advisory board was very involved as we were developing algorithms for calculating CMA’s for our site as well as advising us on what data is more valuable to the Investors, Renters and Landlords.

We are based out of Mountain View, Ca. All three con-founders have technology backgrounds. Bogdan holds Bachelor’s Degree and MBA in Management & Information Systems.

Gene holds a Computer Science degree from University of Wisconsin.

Yelena have graduated from the same school with Management Information Systems degree and working for Management Consulting Company.

We are all residential real estate investors and have moved a lot around the United Stats in the past years. Since our audiences are Investors, Renters and Landlords we very well understand all the blocks on the road whether you are looking for an investment property, looking to rent your property out or moving to a new place and looking for a place and want to know the rent prices around the area.

Our goal is to provide accurate data and become comprehensive analytical tool for rental market. So far we have over a million listings and working on adding more. We are working hard to finalize our contracts with the data sources we are using and planning to display data sources for all of our data.

Another question we get a lot is why people should pick us over other available sites.

1)We are the only site in the rental market that provides free historical data about rentals

2) Rent heat maps

3) Sqft price

4) Advanced search functionality

5) Property details when people search by the exact address

6) Demographics information including crime rates.

We are planning to be in beta version for sometime. We are looking to invite more real estate professionals to our advisory board to guide us in development of new tools and features.

Our team is working very hard on new features.

Buzz about Zilpy is building up!

2008-02-04T16:43:30Z

It has been a week since ZILPY officially launched and we have made new friends. We wanted to thank everybody who took time to write about ZILPY and we want to name a few who made a significant difference for us.

www.thrillist.com. Ben wrote an awesome article about us http://www.thrillist.com/archives/2008/02/hardcore_apartment_rental_data_nation_services.html

We want to extend a personal THANK YOU to him.

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2008/01/rental_heat_map.php thank you for posting this great articleJ

Drew of Zillow for this wonderful article

http://www.geekestateblog.com/zilpy-lots-of-market-facts-and-trends-related-to-local-rental-markets/

David for one of the first reviews of ZILPY

http://www.mytwodollars.com/2008/01/24/look-up-your-neighborhood-rental-facts-with-zilpy/#respond

Thanks to everybody who voted for us on killerstartup.com. Please keep voting! J

http://www.killerstartup.com/Web-App-Tools/Zilpycom---Rental-Rates-and-Stats-Across-the-Country/

Once again THANK YOU! And stay tuned.

Our goal is to be the reference source for the rental market

www.zilpy.com

Your Neighborhood Rental Facts

Getting Rental Market Facts and Trends from Classifieds, a Thing of the Past?

2008-01-29T09:48:48Z

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tue, Jan 29th, 2008 Getting Rental Market Facts and Trends from Classifieds, a Thing of the Past?

Mountain View, CA Jan 29th, 2008 -- Renters, Landlordsand Real Estate Investors gain more power by staying abreast the Rental Market facts and trends with the launch of a new free online service. Today, Zilpy.com launched its free online service providing instant access to the most comprehensive and accurate data about the rental market nationwide. "Whether it's Rent Heat Maps for any given city
or metro area or down-to-spot rent evaluations Comparative Market Analysis (CMA), the newly launched service crunches a huge amount of rental data every day" said. Drabkin, VP of Marketing.
"We save renters a weekend, maybe a week, by making price comparison of various neighborhoods a snap. Add to this a relevant visual display with Rent Heat Maps, demographics, and the ability to narrow down by Budget, Bedrooms and also Apartments or Houses, and you have compressed a weekend or more of work into a minute", Drabkin added.
Based on historical data, Zilpy also helps landlords monitor the rent trends in the neighborhoods where they manage properties. They can instantly evaluate market rents when it's time to fill in a vacancy. "Scouring newspapers and online classifieds to get an idea of current rents may look a thing of the past. Zilpy.com, aggregating all this data to instantly tell you what the market rent is or what amenities your competitors are offering. It's all done in few seconds." Drabkin said.
Residential Real Estate Investors are also not left in the cold. Figuring out how much rent an investor can get from a property means finding out rents for similar properties in the same area. This used to involve looking at the local newspaper's classifieds section, making a few phone calls to get more information about rent, square footage, property condition, extra amenities, and location. The newly launched service provides free instant property rent estimates (CMAs). "We have just scratched the surface in providing a large suite of services for the Residential Real Estate Investors" Drabkin said. If you are checking the rental trends in your city or, even better, what neighborhoods are more expensive than others, add www.zilpy.com to your list.
About Zilpy.com:
Zilpy.com is a free online rental market facts and analysis service dedicated to helping renters and
investors make better rental and investment decisions. Whether looking for a good and affordable area
to rent, fair rental market value for a specific property, or potential investment properties, Zilpy.com
helps renters and investors understand real rental market trends in specific areas of interest from
neighborhood to city or state level.
Contact:
Mrs. Yelena Drabkin, VP of Marketing
Zilpy LLC
(800) 685-0985

yelena.drabkin@zilpy.com
http://www.zilpy.com/

Your Neighborhood Rental Facts

Zilpy - Neighborhood Rental Facts -- weekly update

2008-01-18T16:41:30Z

Another week went by for us at ZILPY, with a lot of effort and
preparation we are adding more and more data to our database, updated
our heatmaps, fixing our last bugs before we officially go live. Zilpy differentiate from previous market efforts by empowering the users to use following services:

	ZILPY
Advanced search	x
Heatmaps	x
Sqft price	x
Historical data	x
Quick estimate	x
Demographics	x
Rental property details	x

More of Zilpy to come in the upcoming weeks

Zilpy - Neighborhood Rental Facts -- New release

2008-01-11T16:26:00Z

Another day means a new release for us. Zilpy, Your Neighborhoods Rental Facts, just released a new version.

Our team is working hard to make sure that renters, investors and landlords are all happy. We have added Advanced Search capability to all of our pages. Also, we've added new month-over-month rent trend charts. Lets say I am looking to move in October, so I look at the chart http://www.zilpy.com/US/California/San_Mateo_County/Menlo_Park/

Looks like November would be the ideal time to move since that's when rent is the lowest for a 2 bedroom place that I am looking for. If you are leasing now, November would also be the best time to extend your lease due to the lowest rent.

We also improved our rent heatmap loading time for huge cities like New York http://www.zilpy.com/US/New_York/

Want to see what is for rent in the neighborhood around you? Well, we have that covered for you as well:

http://www.zilpy.com/US/California/Santa_Clara_County/Mountain_View/Zipcode_94043/100_N_Whisman_Rd/37.38984,-122.0628,0,0,0,0,0,0

The information about similar rentals includes property type, square footage and amenities. Now you can see details for every rental on the map. The best part about it - you can do all that in no time.

Like what you see? Have a suggestion? Question? Comment? Please submit your feedback, we would love to hear what you think.

Neighborhood Rental Facts

2008-01-10T14:54:22Z

In the past 9 years that I lived in US I have moved 6 times already. With the current job market and real estate situation, it might be better to rent than to own a place. Moving around US is pretty easy, but when you move to a new city you need to find where is the best place to rent, which was never an easy thing to do. Who has time to go check it out, when you are on a tight schedule. In the days when you can find everything on the web, it is about time this information be available in one place. Web has tons of sites that post rental ads and yes, if you search hard enough you also can find information about the neighborhoods. What about one site that has rent, neighborhood stats and also shows you rents around the area? Well, finally there is something on the web that can help us, people who move around a lot, to get all the information about the neighborhoods, statistics, rents and also see what is for rent in the neighborhood - http://www.zilpy.com/

I was in the process of moving to California, I knew that I wanted to live somewhere between San Francisco and San Jose, but didn't have a particular place in mind. I had some friends who lived in Campbell, been there a few times myself, but I didn't have much time to drive around and look at neighborhoods. So I thought, lets look at http://www.zilpy.com/, or specifically http://www.zilpy.com/US/California/Santa_Clara_County/Campbell/

I was looking for 2 bedroom apartment, here I could see an average rent for a 2 bedroom place was around $1580, it is a lot more expensive than the area I was moving from, but it is California! So here I could see stats about the neighborhood's average income of the household, % of renters occupied, and education. The site also has a nice heatmap of the rentals around the area.

Renting right now, interested to see what are renting around your area? Just enter you address and you will see what is for rent around your area. Time is money and http://www.zilpy.com/ saves you a lot of your valuable time. Stay tuned for more updates.