Entrepreneur makes living in Iowa City easier
Reporter: Inga Beyer
ingab@corridorbiznews.com

Like many small business owners, Michael Hubbard became an entrepreneur after he found himself in a situation in which he could have used the very service his business now provides.

Last November, Mr. Hubbard was caught off guard when a tenant in his rental property unexpectedly moved out. Forced to fill the room on short notice, Mr. Hubbard struggled to replace the tenant using the traditional means of marketing property: He was stuck with advertising in the classifieds, posting notices on bulletin boards and distributing flyers around campus.

Was that really the most efficient way to fill rental vacancies, he soon asked himself.

Shortly thereafter, inspiration struck. He had the idea of creating a web site that would virtualize the countless bulletin boards on campus that advertise everything from apartments for rent to roommates in need to those looking for rides back home.

One entrepreneurship class and countless long nights of market research later, LiveInIowaCity.com was born.

The web site, which went live Aug. 1, is designed to connect those who are looking for a place to live with those who can provide that space. And although the premise of the site now exclusively focuses on “living in Iowa City” — rather than the broader online bulletin board concept Mr. Hubbard had envisioned last fall – the notion of creating an online community has remained the same.

“This is a cutting edge matching site, far superior to anything in the marketplace right now,” said Mr. Hubbard, now a University of Iowa senior.

The site provides renters with a centralized location to find detailed, up-to-date information on available property. Landlords are able to upload details about their vacant properties from their own computers, attaching pictures and any other pertinent details. This, said Mr. Hubbard, is much more useful because it allows for more than the two to three lines in newspaper classifieds.

It also cuts down on time.

“Students don’t have time to call 50-plus landlords,” said Mr. Hubbard. “It’s much, much quicker this way.” During the busiest months, it is inefficient for students to rely on listings in classifieds which force them to call numerous property management companies and landlords, only to find that those vacancies already have been filled, he added.

David Oliver, vice president of operations, agreed.

The site allows users to limit the scope of their search to a certain price range, apartment size and location, among other things, he said.

“Here you can search what you want,” he said. “It’s much better than smiling and dialing.”

The creation of LiveInIowaCity.com comes at a time when newspaper’s longtime monopoly in classified advertising is being threatened by Internet players such as Monster.com, HotJobs and the popular online community Craigslist Inc. Last year, for example, consulting firm Classified Intelligence published a report that Craigslist, which was started in San Francisco, cost San Francisco area newspapers as much as $65 million in classified advertising revenue in 2004 in employment ads alone.

Locally, LiveInIowaCity.com will join Apartments.com in the Iowa City rental market. Though Apartments.com is a national company — it is owned by Classified Ventures, LLC., a company funded by six major media companies including Gannett Co., which owns the Iowa City Press Citizen — local renters have access to Apartments.com and local rental property listings through the Press Citizen’s web site.

This provides Apartments.com with a competitive edge, said Andrea Rhoades, advertising director for the Press-Citizen.

“It sets us apart as far as being able to market with over 100 Gannett newspapers locally as well as internationally,” she said.

Ms. Rhoades said that it’s going to take time and marketing for similar recognition to come into play with Mr. Hubbard’s site. Nonetheless, she welcomes the challenge.

“I think whenever there’s another opportunity for people to get information there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that,” she said.

She said that she doesn’t anticipate the site to impact the newspaper’s classifieds section. There will always be a segment of the population who rely solely on printed materials to get their information — including classifieds, she said.

Nonetheless, Mr. Hubbard and Mr. Oliver and their two other partners, Brian Clark and Gary Stanlick, see their site as “Iowa City’s online resource for living.”

Today, roughly half a dozen large property management companies, such as Southgate Property Management and Heritage Property Management, post vacancies on the site. There are also four to five smaller landlords who have been posting properties, said Mr. Hubbard.

Mr. Hubbard said that the site comes at a time when the Iowa City rental market is undergoing some changes. While apartment buildings continue to go up throughout the entire city, the rental population isn’t growing at the same rate.

“In the last five years, buildings have just shot up. Just drive around the area, you see construction all over the place,” said Mr. Hubbard. “We expect tremendous growth and traffic as local landlords continue to experience the recent run-up in vacancy rates, and as a result are now looking for a more efficient and less expensive way to market directly to potential tenants.”

While Iowa City vacancies generally range anywhere from 3 to 5 percent, the current rate is up to 10 percent, said Mr. Hubbard.

After a year of operation, they hope to provide more insight into the Iowa City rental market by using statistics from the web site. They will be able to examine, for example, the average rent for a two or three bedroom apartment. They will also be able to give the participating landlords direct feedback by providing them with statistics on how many users viewed their ad, how many leases were signed as a result of the site and what type of wording and display was most effective.

Continuous traffic will ultimately be generated through a message board and coupons from local businesses.

Both Mr. Hubbard and Mr. Oliver hope that once the site is on its feet and all the kinks have been worked out that it will need less attention than it does right now. Mr. Hubbard, who is planning to go to medical school when he graduates next spring, hopes to replicate the LiveInIowaCity.com site in other college towns across the country.  CBJ