Leasing Office Hours: Market Tool 2.0

Market Tool 2.0 brings rental comps and pricing trends into the same RentEngine account you already use to run your leasing, and it's free and unlimited for every RentEngine user.

If you missed our live Q&A session on Market Tool, watch the recording or scroll down for a recap.

What is Market Tool?

Market Tool is a rental comps and competitive analysis tool built into your RentEngine account. It monitors active and previously active rental listings, shows you the full pricing picture around a property, and turns it into a comp set you can defend to an owner.

Market Tool 2.0 is a full rebuild: faster comps, far more filtering, a map view, branded owner reports, and a website widget for capturing new owner leads.

Why run comps inside RentEngine instead of across five tabs?

When the comp data lives in the same place you manage listings, you pull a report, adjust it with what you know about the market, and send it to an owner without leaving the platform. The point isn't to hand you a single number and call it the rent. It's to give you clean, current data on every competing property so you can apply your local knowledge and build a comp set you trust.

Where the data comes from

Where is the comp data pulled from?

Market Tool monitors active rental listings across the United States — every publicly available rental listing posted to the internet listing sites. We collect that data, clean it, and curate it into the tool. When you pull up a property, you see every listing currently active around it, every listing that was recently active, and the full pricing history for each one.

How reliable is it compared to the MLS?

The data covers the full breadth of publicly available rental listings, so for many markets it's more complete than the MLS — especially in areas where agents don't post rentals to the MLS or where there's no reliable MLS rental data at all.

The one difference: the MLS records the close price, and that isn't publicly disclosed for rentals. To fill that gap, we track the full price history of a listing, including the last price before it came off the market, and impute that as the rented price. It's a step less precise than a recorded close price, but it gives you a defensible read in markets the MLS doesn't serve well.

How often does the data refresh?

Listing data refreshes in a given market every day or every other day. A short delay of a day or two is normal before the latest listings appear.

Building a comp set

Can I run comps on a condo, duplex, or fourplex?

Yes. Your existing RentEngine listings — current and past — are preloaded with their beds, baths, and location, so selecting one builds a starting comp set automatically. From there you can narrow to the right competitive set with filters.

What filters can I use?

You can filter by distance or zip code, and by property type, so you can compare like with like and exclude condos, townhouses, or duplexes. You can choose whether to include only scattered-site properties — single-family homes and small multifamily — or also pull in large rental communities with on-site management.

You can also filter by amenities. Off-street parking was one of the most requested, so you can now include or exclude properties based on parking and in-unit laundry. If your property has no pool, you can remove every comp that does. A square-footage filter is part of the launch as well.

Can I run comps on a property that isn't listed in RentEngine?

Yes. In the property dropdown, choose "Analyze an off-platform address," enter the address and the bed and bath count, and the tool generates a report. You get full access to comps for any property, not only the ones you currently have listed in RentEngine.

Reading the report

What metrics does the report show?

The report shows the full price distribution — the high end, the low end, and the median — plus the median days on market. The median is the more instructive number, because it sets outliers aside and tells you where properties are actually renting.

You also get a scatterplot showing how price relates to days on market, so you can see whether higher-priced properties are sitting at 30, 40, or 50 days.

What is the supply and demand ratio?

This is the metric to watch. It compares how many new properties came onto the market against how many rentals came off it over the period, which tells you how much pricing power you and your owner have.

A ratio of 1 means the market is balanced. Above 1.5, supply is outpacing renter demand, so you'll have little room to push price. Below 0.8, demand is strong — you can hold a little longer at a higher price and still expect it to rent. Most comp analysis stops at median rent and days on market; the supply and demand ratio is what tells you how aggressive to be.

Does adjusting the comp set change the numbers?

Yes. As you include or exclude properties — a unit on the wrong side of the highway, one that rented too far back, the ones with in-unit laundry you don't want to count — the median price, price range, days on market, and supply and demand ratio all update to match.

A map view makes this faster. It plots your property and the comps so you can see where each one sits and decide whether it belongs in the set, much like scanning listings on Zillow.

Owner reports

Can I send a branded report to owners?

Yes. Once your comp set is set, click Generate Report to produce a report carrying your company logo and contact information. It shows the key metrics, the filters you applied, and the full comp set, with any property you excluded removed and the numbers adjusted accordingly.

You can send it to the owner in one click — their contact information is preloaded if it's already in RentEngine — add a CC for someone on your team so replies route back to you, or download it as a PDF.

Can I add my own commentary?

Yes. You can add agent comments to the report, or have the AI draft a short read on the market that you edit before sending.

Capturing new owner leads

Can I use this to win new management clients?

Yes. Several beta users wanted to put this data in front of prospective owners, not just existing ones. So Market Tool 2.0 includes a website widget that captures owner leads directly from your site.

How does the website widget work?

You install the widget on your site with an iframe — the homepage works well, in a section like "Get my free rental analysis." You can match its color and design to your site. A prospective owner enters their contact and property information, and the tool generates the comp report in the background.

It doesn't send the report automatically. You're notified when a lead comes in, the report is ready for you to review, and you send it when you're ready — alongside your sales materials. That gives you the report as a reason to start the conversation rather than ending it before it begins.

Where do the leads go?

Each lead is sent to you by email, so you can route it into Lead Simple or whatever owner CRM you use.

Coverage and access

Is Market Tool 2.0 available in Canada?

Not yet. We're collecting Canadian listing data now and expect to open the tool there within 60 to 90 days.

Is there an API?

Yes. There's an API for the market tool with limited access and some usage limits to protect the data, but it covers most use cases, so you can pull market data into your own workflows.

Can I bring in my own MLS data?

The MLS doesn't give us access to its lease data directly. For accounts with an MLS API key — the Miami Association of Realtors, for example, issues them to brokers — we're exploring a way to feed that data into your own account's market tool.

Market Tool is free to use for all RentEngine users.