eBay's Rent.com, a classfieds site for apartment rentals, said it added a feature for students looking for a place to live by adding a search-by-university feature. Students can search for apartments adjacent to more than 4,000 colleges and universities nationwide.
Rent.com already has a Roommates feature to help find roommates and a Moving Center with links to "moving-resource service providers." The company said it will give renters a $100 Visa reward card once they choose a Rent.com listing and the lease is verified.
eBay acquired Rent.com in February for approximately $415 million in cash plus acquisition costs, net of Rent.com's cash on hand. Rent.com has over 5.1 million apartment units and 22,000 properties listed in more than 1,500 real estate markets across the country.
eBay owns other classifieds sites including Kijiji.com, Mobile.de (a car classifieds site in Germany) and Marktplaats.nl (a classifieds website in the Netherlands). eBay also holds a 25 percent stake in classifieds site Craigslist. eBay has a real estates category as well as "Wanted" listings on eBay.com. Earlier this month, it announced it would roll out pet-related service classifieds listings in 2006, which may be a sign it plans to rollout classifieds-format listings for services in other categories as well.
http://www.rent.com
