The national housing registry is an on-line service that will provide extensive and accurate listings of off-campus housing and of students looking for roommates.

Our program has been designed from the ground up to be student-friendly, by a management and technical team with a deep history in the student environment and with housing listing services. We've used our experience to develop a program that works better for everyone: students, landlords, and student associations.

Profits from the housing registry - over $10 per listing, and expected to rise over time - are returned to student associations.

So, how does it work in practice?

Students at your school who are looking for accommodation will come to your website and continue to the link to Renting Spaces. They enter some criteria, do a search, and hopefully find a place to live. Nice and simple. From a student perspective, that's all there is to it.

For each metro area that Renting Spaces operates in, there will also be a central housing registry page. Your students can also go to this site and do the same searches. In either case, their visit is recorded in the 'hit log' for your area as a visit credited to your school - this becomes important later, in how listing revenue is divided.

Students from other participating schools in your area (if any) would go to their schools' respective websites or to the central site; their visits, too, will be credited to their school. Non-students and students from other schools who use the service will have their visits credited to a 'non-affiliated' category.

Landlords will use a central rentingspaces.ca page to list, manage, and pay for their ads on-line. (They can also call a 1-800 number and place an ad over the phone.) Why do landlords have to go to a central page? This is to reinforce for them the idea that the service is city-wide and not limited to a particular school, enhancing the marketability of the service. They get all the schools for one price - a great selling point!

Students from participating schools can post roommate listings for free.

All revenue from listings is collected by the central office and then redistributed according to a formula. For basic listings, Whitematter receives up to 22.5% of revenue for developing and maintaining the registry's technical infrastructure, and a fee of $5 for operating the central office and marketing is deducted from each listing.(This central office fee is a break-even fee; if it is too high, it will be reduced in subsequent years.) The remaining money is put into a pool for that area and passed on quarterly to Campus Advantage.

Landlords can receive a discount on bulk purchases of ads. For this type of listing, the revenue split is bit different. There is no central office fee, whitematter retains 40% of listing revenue, and the remaining 60% put into the 'fee pool' and is passed on to the affilate institutions.

Each quarter, Whitematter Development will distribute this money, less a small administrative fee, to participating schools. In the end, over $10 for each basic listing goes back to participating associations. Whitematter distributes the pooled money according to each schools' share of site visits.

So, an example: If City A generates 3000 paid listings in a year, about $30,000 is returned to participating student associations. If your school, the University of A, generated 60% of the search traffic to the housing registry in your area, you would receive $18,000. Hide.

My school already runs a similar service. Why should we participate in this program?

From the outset, this program was designed to work better for everyone - students, student associations, and landlords. We want everybody to win!

Students win, because they get better search tools, automated e-mail updates, and the ability to advertise for roommates for free. Just as important, they get a better selection of accommodation - unlike current systems, all the listings in a city will be available to any student in any school in that city. We also provide a toll-free number for help, expanded office hours, a 'hot list' feature, and more. Our service will continue to improve and evolve in response to student needs and requests.

Landlords win, because the service provides them with the best access to the student market at a fair price. By listing in one place, they can get their ad seen by students in multiple schools. Landlords will get great results using this service. Landlords also get toll-free telephone access; the ability to create, manage, and pay for listings on-line; and access to bulk discount programs.

Your association wins, because you get more money back from listing fees. About $10 per listing is returned to student associations as profit. That's real money you can use for your own services and events. Take a walk around the neighborhood of your school. Each 'For Rent' sign you see represents a possible $10 fee for your association!

You also don't have to worry about the day-to-day operations of the service - we take care of that for you. And we pay the cost of improvements and upgrades to the service. The best part: It's FREE to participate. Hide.

What do we have to do to participate?

At a minimum, your association will be responsible for setting up a housing registry page as part of your website, and linking to Renting Spaces from appropriate places in the rest of your site. We will provide you with technical assistance in getting set up.

You will also need to try to get the institution's main website site linked to your housing registry page. We can provide materials and sample sites to help make your case to your administration.

If that's as much as you want or are able to do, that's all you have to do. However, since your revenue is be dependent on how well-used your site is, you may want to assist us in marketing the service. You know your area best, and we welcome any marketing assistance you want to provide.

After that's all done, you don't have anything else to do; everything related to the service is run through our national office in Edmonton.

When does the service launch?

Renting Spaces has been running since 2006. We have strong market shares in the Edmonton area and hope to expand into other cities in the future. We are looking forward to updating our website in the next few months allowing us to offer an even better user experience for both students and landlords. Until then, we will provide potential partners with access to our development site, so they can see the improvements we're working on.

We expect a lot of demand for this service, so contact us early! This is important because student housing services generate 40% of their business in July and August (25% in August alone), so the earlier we get you set up, the better your results will be!

Are there any catches? This sounds almost too easy.

No! No catches at all!

Why do you get such a good deal? Well, simply because it is your access to students that sets this program apart from other accommodation listing services, and that access is worth something to landlords. Whitematter is committed to making this program a success. Those two things mean that we are trying to offer a program that is compelling. We want to make the choice to participate simple and clear; we want to create a program where a school would need a good reason NOT to participate.

To recap, our new service will be in operation in this spring, participating costs nothing, and you will receive a large share of the ad revenues for your area. There really is no reason not to sign up! There are no hidden catches, no hidden costs, no hassles. Hide.

How does this differ from existing off-campus housing listing programs?

The key difference with this program over existing campus programs is that it operates across multiple schools in a metropolitan area. This provides several advantages - economies of scale, improved listing selection your students, and a better service overall - with minimal drawbacks.

Landlords like the service, because they get access to students at many schools, and students are better-served because all of the previously-disparate listings are consolidated. In the end, the service is more profitable to you while maintaining or improving on the quality of existing services.

This service will also feature many value-added features that others don't, such as automatic e-mails to notify searchers of new units that meet their criteria, and 'hot lists' (bookmarked lists of ads for easy reference and printing). Both of these features were suggested by users, and we plan to keep adding features in response to user requests and needs. That's another key difference - our program is not stagnant, and will continue to evolve and improve to better meet student needs.

There are many housing sites on the internet. But we think rentingspaces is better than them all -- better user features, a better program for student associations, and ultimately a better selection of accommodations. Hide.

How much money will our school make?

Participating student associations make about $10 per listing for listings in their area. It's a bit more complicated than that, however, due to the fact that multiple schools participate, and the revenue must therefore be shared among them. This sharing is based upon the share of traffic that each school generates for the service.

How revenue-sharing works (in general terms)

All of the listing revenue for an area is pooled together. After the technology support, and central office fees are deducted, the remainder (over $10/listing) is distributed according to how much traffic a particular association generates for the service. Traffic is calculated as the total number of searches and saved searches that are conducted. Our general agreement is that 50% of the profit is returned to affiliate student associations.

Thus, how much you make will depend on two factors: How many listings are created in your city, and how many of the searches done on those listings originate with your site or your students.

One more time: How much can our school make?

If you'd like to estimate the potential revenue for your particular association, please contact whitematter. We have done a considerable amount of operational and demographic research, and can discuss what a reasonable revenue target would be for your school.

In the longer term, we think this program can be a huge success. Based on our research, we believe that the overall national market for this service could peak at between 50,000 to 80,000 ads per year on a national basis in about four years. As more money is returned to schools, the more ads we get that would translate to well over than 1 million dollars of revenue to share among participating associations.

As an example of the kinds of revenue the program is capable of generating today, for an individual school, we estimate that the University of Alberta Students' Union will net between $15,000 and $21,000 annually. And that's pure profit; all the costs of running the service are deducted ahead of time.

Also keep in mind that there are NO fees to join the program anyway, so there is no real risk to participating, yet the real and potential rewards are huge! Hide.

How much do landlords pay?

Landlords will pay $25 ($26.25 with GST) for a basic, one-month listing on the service.

If a landlord purchases ten or more ads at a time, they are eligible for discounts of up to 20% over the basic rates.

Students can advertise roommate listings for free.

How will this affect how many listings are posted?

For schools which charge little or nothing for listings, these rates may impact on the number of ads placed by landlords. However, the difference will likely not be great - we would expect less than 20% difference, and we think that over time the number and quality of listings will actually increase.

Here's why.

First, past experience shows this effect to be less than would be expected. When the U of A housing registry went from a free model to a paying model, the number of listings dropped, but not by much. Rather, the number of active and accurate listings did not drop much, if at all. What did drop, however, were the non-vacant listings that were left on continuously by landlords. As a result, the quality of the listings went up, more students used the service, and more landlords began listing with the service.

Second, in relation to other mechanisms for promoting their property, Renting Spaces offers tremendous value. At the U of A, there are many times more people searching for housing than there are available units. And when traditional ad rates are compared to the effective cost of advertising on Renting Spaces -- that is, how much does the ad cost per 1000 times it is viewed by someone -- Renting Spaces comes out way ahead.

Again using the U of A as an example, the housing registry is searched over 200,000 times per year, and is by far the most-popular online service of the Students' Union.

In the end, landlords will use the service if it delivers results. We think that campus housing registries can deliver excellent value to landlords and excellent revenue to your association. Hide.

How will the service be marketed?

This is where you come in. Your knowledge and expertise of your institution and demographic are extremely important in developing your own marketing strategy. Whitematter asks that a minimum of 10% of the revenue shares returned to your student association are then used to properly advertise the Renting Spaces service on your campus.

Marketing campaigns should be tailored to each metro area and institution, but can be expected to include print advertising, web campaigns, and direct marketing. There can be separate campaigns targeting students (searchers) and landlords (listers) as needed. Whitematter would be happy to assist in the creation of advertising materials custom to your campus. Hide.

How can we convince our Administration to let us run the off-campus housing service?

If this is your situation, rest assured that we will do whatever we can to assist you. We can provide you with materials to make the case that off-campus housing listings should be handled by your student association, we can set up demo sites, and we can run the numbers for you.

That said, the general approach you can use would be as follows:

• Do some research to determine whether or not running the off-campus housing service costs the administration money, breaks even, or makes a profit.
• If their existing service costs money, focus on the savings they can realize by letting you run the service.
• If their service breaks even or makes a profit, focus on the quality of the service you will be providing. You can do this by pointing out that students will have access to a wider range of listings and by highlighting the user-friendly features our service provides, versus what is currently offered.

Finally, as a last resort, you could agree to share the proceeds you receive from the service, or arrange to have a certain percentage designated for a scholarship fund. There are, we think, a lot of ways to convince your Administration to pass the program on to you. Hide.

How will the transition from our existing service to rentingspaces.ca be managed?

The easiest way is to run the two services side-by-side for a month, until all the old listings have expired. We can help you design a transitional webpage that students and landlords could use to access both sets of data.

If that's not feasible, we will convert and import your existing data into our database. This will slow down deployment a bit - doing data normalization and validation can take quite a bit of effort - but it can be done.

In the end, the best solution depends on your particular situation, and we are happy to try and make your transition as smooth as possible. Hide.

What is Whitematter Development and what is its' role in the program?

Whitematter Development is a small company specializing in web application development and providing technology support services. We work primarily in the post-secondary market, and employ students wherever possible. You can learn more on the whitematter web site.

The founder of Whitematter is Marc Dumouchel, a former student leader (U of A SU President, 1991-92) and former director of the U of A's housing registry. He is now the General Manager of the U of A SU.

The President of Whitematter is Juliana du Pree, a former employee of the U of A SU in their Marketing and Communications Department. Juliana's experience in the student market brings a unique insight to Renting Spaces and Whitematter's Operations.

Whitematter's role in the national housing registry is two-fold. First, Whitematter has developed the software required to run the service, and is responsible for maintaining the software and any hardware required to run the service. Second, Whitematter is operating, on a break-even basis, the central national office for the housing registry, providing support to both landlords who want to list and associations that are participating in the program. Hide.