Thinking about ways to improve your company’s online presence, fill vacancies faster or catch investors’ attention? A RentCafe website might be just what you need. If you have questions about RentCafe websites or how to stand up a great new website for your property management business, stick around.
What are RentCafe websites?
RentCafe websites are high-performing websites we create for clients looking for a professional online presence. These websites make it easy for them to market their company and properties to potential renters, owners and investors.
We offer two types of marketing websites: corporate sites and property sites.
- Corporate websites effectively communicate a company’s profile and entire portfolio.
- Property websites highlight what is unique to each property in your portfolio
What can RentCafe websites do for property managers?
Boost your conversions
Listing available units on an internet listing service (ILS) is helpful, but having a dedicated website for your business can significantly improve results. With a RentCafe website, you’re able to showcase your brand, highlight key property features, display photos and answer common renter questions clearly.
Keep things interesting & fresh
RentCafe websites offer features beyond application processing. The more clients give us to work with, such as 360-degree photos for virtual tours, the better prospects can explore the property online. This significantly boosts the likelihood of them taking the next step in their buying journey.
Clients can regularly refresh their sites using new templates and other visual updates available on our platform — without additional fees. Our Creative Services team is ready to assist with comprehensive branding updates or minor tweaks, like enhanced logos and improved visuals, ensuring your website always represents your brand effectively.
Naturally, if a client already has a RentCafe website, they don’t have to start from scratch or re-enter any content to refresh their look — they can simply update their current template or switch to a new one. Our platform even allows clients to experiment with different templates behind the scenes, ensuring the live website remains unaffected until they’re ready to launch the updated version.
Attract owners & investors
Corporate websites are valuable tools for attracting investors. The sites effectively communicate your company’s profile and portfolio, highlighting investment opportunities clearly and professionally.
Optimize for online search
Outdated or poorly made websites have one thing in common: they aren’t searchable. Yardi is a Google Partner, which gives us more training and support from Google. This is part of the reason RentCafe websites are always optimized for search engines, which is an important part of getting your property to show up in search results. Our team works with you to create engaging content that appeals to web crawlers and humans alike — you simply can’t have a good website unless it does both!
Streamline the leasing process
Full online leasing integration is available for multifamily properties, single family homes and self storage facilities. Prospects who land on these property websites can apply directly through the site, complete required screenings, upload necessary documents and connect seamlessly with your property management team.
RentCafe websites are built by Yardi web designers, so you know our sites integrate seamlessly with Yardi Breeze. Each rental application automatically syncs with your software and instantly becomes visible on your Breeze dashboard.
Satisfy mobile users
Most renters search for new homes on their mobile devices, which is why RentCafe websites are built with mobile users in mind. Whether visitors use smartphones, tablets or desktops, your site will look professional and function seamlessly on all devices.
It’s harder than you might think to make a website work well on every device. Leave it to professionals to ensure quality and searchability.
Who is eligible to be on RentCafe websites?
Any Breeze or Breeze Premier client can set up a corporate website, which includes general information about their company and residential properties. Meanwhile, property websites are exclusively available for Breeze Premier clients. These dedicated websites maximize your property’s visibility, streamline the application process and simplify management workflows, providing added efficiency and flexibility.
What about commercial properties?
Commercial properties can still be listed on a corporate website, but they won’t have the same online leasing workflow. For these properties, leasing typically involves direct communication, customized agreements and separate screening processes.
How does RentCafe help with SEO?
Our team doesn’t just focus on your website structure — we actively support you in optimizing and localizing your unique content for search engines. We work closely with you, asking detailed questions to generate descriptive and keyword-rich content tailored to their property and target audience.
For instance, we’ll make sure information about unit types, amenities and location specifics automatically feeds into SEO-friendly tags and headers. This way, prospects easily find your property when searching online, whether they’re looking for specific amenities, particular unit layouts or properties that cater to certain demographics (e.g., students, seniors).
How involved are clients in creating SEO content?
We make sure there’s enough content on the site by asking clients plenty of questions before building their sites. Gathering content can be challenging, but our RentCafe specialists are here to help. We will capture information about your business, properties and target audience, ensuring we have the right keywords and descriptive content in place.
We care about the details. Everything you tell us about amenities, unit types and locations will enhance your website’s SEO. Likewise, the more we know about your target demographic, the better we can tailor your website’s content.
Do Yardi Breeze clients need training to edit their RentCafe website?
Most of the time, our team handles the back-end work. We’ll help gather the content (we can even stock images if needed) and build the site. After the site is complete, we typically offer training sessions on how to manage or update the website on their own.
For those clients who would rather not deal with the back end at all, our team is available to handle changes and content updates. This way, site management can remain completely stress-free for our clients.
Ultimately, clients don’t need extensive back-end knowledge unless they prefer to handle updates themselves. We’re always here to assist!
What is the process of setting up a RentCafe website?
If you’re interested in getting started with a RentCafe website, the first step is choosing a theme from our residential template library or self storage template library — we have over 100 available for property sites. While these themes provide a starting point, everything from photos and colors to branding can be customized to fit your needs.
Once you’ve selected a theme and licensed it, we’ll start working with you immediately, even if you’re still setting up Breeze or Breeze Premier. Typically, we can build an initial version of your website within a week of receiving your photos and information.
As far as the timeframe, most clients take about a month or two to fully launch their first website. If you have multiple properties, subsequent websites usually take less time.
RentCafe websites vs. third-party services
Integration with Breeze is one of the biggest advantages over third-party website design services. Because clients already maintain their property data within Breeze, RentCafe websites automatically pull this data, keeping pricing, floor plans and availability up to date without manual entry. This integration makes the website a reliable primary source for prospects, reducing the number of individual inquiries that need to be handled by you or your staff.
What is RentCafe Chat IQ & who benefits from it?
RentCafe Chat IQ is an AI-powered chatbot designed to answer common prospect questions quickly. It’s particularly beneficial for smaller property management companies without a dedicated leasing team available at all times. Prospects receive immediate responses instead of waiting for someone to follow up.
The chatbot integrates directly with Breeze Premier, meaning it has access to detailed property-specific information. This ensures the chatbot provides relevant and accurate responses rather than generic answers. Today, over one million units use Chat IQ.
Property managers using Chat IQ don’t have to worry about losing potential renters who move on when they don’t receive fast answers. Chat IQ will monitor analytics, which can be used to gain insights into chat interactions and conversion metrics.
What support does Yardi offer for RentCafe Websites?
We support clients throughout the design process without additional charges. If a client needs more extensive design or branding changes, our Creative Services team provides assistance at competitive rates. From simple logo refinements to custom 3D floor plans and site maps, we offer practical solutions to keep your website visually appealing and relevant for years to come.
If you’re interested in RentCafe websites, contact us or start a live chat, and we’ll set you up with someone on our Creative Services team.
We’d like to thank Samantha Stopol, Team Leader on the Breeze RentCafe Setup team, for providing the valuable information in this article.
