Property rentals firm ‘will help trade take on Airbnb’

Property rentals firm ‘will help trade take on Airbnb’

A new trade-only villas and apartments rental business, giving agents real-time access to 600,000 managed properties, launched last week.

A new trade-only villas and apartments rental business, giving agents real-time access to 600,000 managed properties, launched last week.

Rentals Combined offers short-term rentals in 14,000 locations across 114 countries.

Its properties are currently available only through the Sabre global distribution system, but will be accessible to all agents via its website by the end of next month.

Co-founder and chief executive Nico Nicholas said the company would help the trade “take on” peer to-peer firms such as Airbnb.

He aims to increase Rentals Combined’s range to 1.3 million properties by the end of the year and more than two million by the end of 2016.

The company, which is a member of the Travel Trust Association, has 20 staff.

Nicholas said: “One of the key things about Rentals Combined is that everything is quality controlled. Our agents are verified before they can access the system and all property owners are credit-checked and vetted.

“The rentals market is something that agents haven’t really been able to take advantage of. There are companies like Airbnb, but we’re offering agents a solution and giving them thousands of properties to sell.

“This is easy to use and agents can feel confident selling the properties listed on our site.”

Nicholas said agents could set their own commission levels, with a suggested rate of 10%.

“If an agent is creating something bespoke and putting a lot of work into it, they can control the mark-up for their services,” he added.