StuRents

StuRents is a free online student property website for students, landlords and letting agents. The website offers private landlords and letting agents the opportunity to upload property profiles with descriptions, pictures, facilities, video walkthroughs and contact details of the landlord.
StuRents was founded by two students at the University of Durham, Matthew Heap and Michael Rainsford. The company is currenly based in Durham, where the website launched, and has already expanded to York, Newcastle and Manchester.
StuRents became a limited company on the 8th December, 2008, with visitor traffic peaking at around 1,200 unique visits a day in the peak house hunting months of November to March. The company's website was created by 1-Web Services, a Durham based website design, development and hosting company.
Origins
StuRents was started after the founders' own experience searching for student property in Durham showed that there were no adequate provisions for easy house searching online. Having realised that a potential market was largely untapped in their university town they began contacting landlords regarding the project, as well as employing 1-Web Services to begin developing a prototype website. The company believes that:
Walking the streets, knocking door-to-door to find your student property should be a thing of the past.
Due to the popularity of user-contributed content on many major websites it was decided that allowing landlords to create their own profiles and profiles for their property was the best way for the site to work. The site also allows additional user contributions through student feedback on property and business profiles, as well as the ability for students to create house groups to initially search for a house and, once renting a property, communicate with their landlord and mange financial issues between house mates.
Features
StuRents offers a platform for university students to search for rented accomodation. The main feature of the site for end users is an AJAX powered search page which allows quick searching of properties by number of bed spaces, price per week and areas of their chosen location. Results are displayed in a list format for quick browsing as well as on a map created using the Google Maps API.
House profiles can be created on the site by landlords and letting agents after signing up for a free account. The property owner is able to add their property's details for searching as well as placing it on a map of the location. Recent expansions to property profiles have included a photo gallery, linking to YouTube videos and file uploads for contracts and inventories.
StuRents generates revenue through offering advertising opportunities to businesses within each university location. Anyone can register for a company account which allows them to add banner advertisements to the site, as well as create business profiles. Users are only charged when they chose to make their advert or profile available to the public. Banner adverts are shown to users after selecting their location to search, making them relevant to specific university locations. Business profiles can be searched on the front page map along with houses; local businesses also appear on the maps for individual house profiles.
Recently the website expanded its business profiles feature to allow owners of profiles to add monthly offers for their business. These offers can be viewed on the website itself, but are also emailed to registered students or landlords in the specific locations, depending on the options a business owner selects when creating the offer.
Further revenue is generated through other property based services. StuRents offers property owners the opportunity to buy video walkthroughs of their properties and recommends property maintenance companies to service their houses throughout the academic year. In addition the site is beginning to offer utilities comparisons for students and property owners, earning revenue from referral schemes set up by the utilities providers.
Awards
StuRents has been recognised for its achievements and has won various business awards in the North East of England.
*26th March 2009 - North East Digital Awards 2008 Overall Winner Digital Users Category
*26th March 2009 - North East Digital Awards 2008 Best Business to Business website
*18th March 2009 - Durham Blueprint Awards - Second Place
*18th March 2009 - Durham Blueprint Awards - Most Beneficial to University Community
People
StuRents was founded by Matthew Heap in early 2008. Soon after he invited Michael Rainsford as a business partner to start the project. Michael currently works for Morgan Stanley, whilst Matthew has taken on the venture full time to expand the StuRents brand nationally.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu