By Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
Over 100,000 people will be coming to Jacksonville for the 2005 Super Bowl and they’ll almost all need a place to stay. But, maybe they don’t want to stay in a hotel or cruise ship. Maybe they want a large house with a pool and a place to entertain guests during the event. Eventrenthouse.com says it is the place to look. It’s is a new company that provides an Internet service to showcase rental properties available during large events nationwide. Its focus is on short-term rentals in cities where visitors of highly-attended and popular events desire more comfortable, spacious, and convenient accommodations; some properties might be near a beach or very close to the venue itself, have pools and covered decks, and generally better amenities conducive to entertaining.
Three former information technology managers, Dennis Kunkle, Jamie Fields and Scott Winters (who also worked at Watson Realty Corp, Inc. as a real estate agent for a while,) started brainstorming about six months ago and came up with the idea of a website to feature rental properties available during large events.
“We had discussed it a long time ago because we felt Jacksonville was a little lacking on hotel space for the 2005 Super Bowl,” said Scott Winters, the chief marketing officer. “They are expecting at least 100,000 people coming in and statistically 4 to 5 percent of them will be looking for private houses as opposed to hotel space. We just thought the potential of rental your own property to these people would be very lucrative to the owner. So, we decided to do it.”
They are not just handling the Super Bowl event rentals in Jacksonville, but also events such as Mardi Gras, Indy 500, Final Four, PGA Tour stops, Masters Tournament and even the Albuquerque (N.Mex.) Balloon Festival.
“Basically, anywhere that there is a large concentration of people going to a city for an event, we are procuring private rental [houses, condominiums] for people who want to rent to those people,” said Winters, who said he expects to have quite a bit of listings by the end of November.
Realtors are very important to Eventrenthouse.com.
“We are promoting the company to Realtors because their contacts are high,” said Winters. “They have a very strong customer base and actually a lot of Realtors have their own investment properties that they might want to rent out. A lot of the interest that we have had this past month has been from agents. They want to put their properties online so they can be rented for the Super Bowl.”
Eventrenthouse.com does not pay any commission to Realtors in regards to the properties but they do offer them certain incentives, such as a link to the Realtor’s website on the listing.
“We can’t pay commission to Realtors because we are not a brokerage,” he said. “We are not competing with other real estate companies, we are only offering an option.”
They will be attending Realtor events and visiting Realtor offices to promote the new site.
The service is nationwide, but they are starting out in Jacksonville because the demand is so high because of the housing situation with the Super Bowl coming up. They are advertising in other cities now so those who want to come know where to look for rentals in Jacksonville.
“We know from our research from other Super Bowls that the need is there,” said Winters. “The financial possibility for owners listing their home or vacation property is very positive. Not only public attendees coming from other states, but often businesses, CEOs, and event management staff desire more suitable lodging than a hotel room.”
Eventrenthouse.com, Inc. is like Ebay, a self-service website, for those who want to list or rent a property. Those who want to list their home take photos of their property and register on the site by giving information about the property, lease agreement and lease amount.
They pay 5 percent of the rental amount via online credit card payment to Eventrenthouse.com, Inc. to list their property on the site. Those who want to get contact information about the property pay 1 percent of the rental amount to Eventrenthouse.com. to contact the owner of the property.
For the next six months, Realtors are given a discount, 3 instead of 5 percent, to list any properties that they are affiliated with, whether it is a customer of theirs or their own property on the site. Realtors will get a pass code.
“The reason we do that is for security,” said Winters. “We don’t people going in there for free pulling up addresses. It’s for serious people who really want a property. They will pay that certain amount. There are certain properties in Houston that we can get that rent for $10,000-$15,000 that are close to the stadium and are very large estates. The 1 percent is very proportionate to the rental price, so we can keep certain people out that are just browsing and only the serious companies and CEO’s who want to rent the property will pay that amount. We have a online server through SunTrust Bank, so it is a very secure, well established financial server.”
Eventrenthouse is not being picky about what type of houses is put on the site because they want to make sure they are offering a wide range of properties in various areas in each city. To view listings on the site, go to www.eventrenthouse.com and click on rent a property. At the top, choose from the drop down menu of events and there will be information concerning, when the property is available, how much it will lease for, deposit amount, distance to the event, bedroom and bath amount and some additional property information the renter may want to know.
“We have a progressive marketing plan,” said Winters. “We are starting in Jacksonville and we have a lot of people in the wings who want to rent their properties. So, once we have that database of properties in there, we will move on to the next event. We will just go from market to market and that is how we are going to build our database.”
Winters advises putting on a listing as soon as it is known that it will be available for rent during an event.
“They could actually put a rental on there now for the Super Bowl and it will be on there the entire year,” said Winters. “They only pay one flat fee. The sooner the better because your exposure will be greater and you will get a bigger bang for your buck.”
The company has a growth plan and they eventually would like to get into property management and listing properties as a broker.
“This is years and years down the line,” said Winters. “But, we do want to grow and also get into taking rental properties, renovating them and listing them as rentals.”