Realtor.com® announced a new partnership with home-sharing and vacation-booking site Airbnb to allow potential home buyers to experience a specific neighborhood before purchasing. The partnership will allow visitors to book Airbnb accommodations from realtor.com®’s site, in an effort to help potential home buyers to “live like a local” at owner-rented single-family homes, condos, lofts, and other properties.

The move is expected to help the portal better target millennials, the largest generational home-buying segment in the market. Executives at realtor.com® hope the “try before you buy” experience will translate to consumers who are better educated about the communities they’re interested in buying into.

Learn how you can use home-sharing sites such as Airbnb to attract potential clients.

“This collaboration with Airbnb reinforces our commitment to giving consumers unparalleled insight to make informed real estate decisions,” says Ryan O’Hara, CEO at Move, Inc., a subsidiary of News Corp that operates realtor.com® under an agreement with NAR. “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.”

Here’s how it will work: Visitors to realtor.com® will be able to select the option to “Airbnb before buying” for certain properties, with this option appearing on the homepage and on for-sale listing detail pages. Airbnb executives say their contribution will help potential buyers with the decision-making process.

“We’re pleased to team up with realtor.com® to encourage and support the home-buying process,” says Chip Conley, head of global hospitality and strategy at Airbnb. “As we offer a variety of unique accommodations in neighborhoods across the country, we’ll be able to allow potential home owners the special opportunity to experience those neighborhoods as if they already live there.”

Source: “Realtor.com® and Airbnb Team Up to Give Home Buyers Opportunity to Live Like a Local Before Purchasing,” realtor.com® (June 24, 2015).

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