Airbnb Partners With Realtor.com To Show Potential Homebuyers What A Neighborhood Is Like

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(Dru Bloomfield – At home in Scottsdale)

You can try out a mattress before you buy it, test drive a car or ask for a frozen yogurt sample before you buy, so why not a house? That’s the niche Airbnb and Realtor.com are trying to fill with a new partnership that lets potential homebuyers try out a neighborhood before they make the big decision to move there.

The home rental company and the real estate listings site have joined up to give people a “try before you buy” experience, reports USA Today.

People in the market for a home can look through properties on Realtor.com and then book a stay somewhere in the neighborhood on Airbnb so they can see what it feels like to live there before they make a move.

“Our relationship with Airbnb—a company that helps millions of people feel at home in communities around the world—allows us to reduce some of the unknown factors associated with relocating to a new community,” Ryan O’Hara, chief executive officer of Move, Realtor.com’s parent company, said in a written statement.

It’s a win-win for both companies — Realtor.com gets customers using its site and possibly finding a home they like, while Airbnb gets new customers. Heck, once they buy a place they might even opt to rent it out on Airbnb in the future.

Now if only you could try out relationships before you buy into them, am I right?

Airbnb, Realtor.com team up to let you try before you buy [USA Today]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist