Rent.com.au Q1 2025: Revenues Down but RentPay Leads the Way

The Australian rental properties specialist Rent.com.au has released its financial statement for the first quarter of the 2025 financial year.

Highlights include:

• Revenues are down year-on-year to A$678,000 (USD 450,000), a 14% decrease from Q1 2024
• RentPay revenues increase to A$172,000 for the quarter, up 70% YoY
• Quarterly RentPay ARPU surpasses $6.50 per month for first time
• RentPay surpasses 10,000 active users after largest-ever quarterly uptake from new customers
• RentPay closes EBITDA losses to A$600,000

Rent.com.au is a publicly listed rental marketplace specialist that operates in a hyper-competitive space where demand far outweighs the supply of rental properties—Australia is a mostly buyer-focused market. The business has struggled to grow meaningfully since 2022, with quarterly revenues mostly flat quarter-to-quarter.

Greg Bader, CEO at Rent.com.au, said:

"Search portal revenue was slightly down compares to previous quarters. We are still seeing a tougher advertising market and have reduced cost in that area while we focus on our key partnerships. We expect the advertising marekt to improve as interest rates start easing again.

"Our search portal cointinues to provide renters with the best search experience in market, as evidenced by out iOS Android apps being the best rates real estate apps, however with fewer people moving through the quarter, demand for our search portal product, and consequently revenue, was affected."

Despite being the market leader for rentals nationwide, Rent.com.au's popular RentPay product—a simple-to-use digital account that gives tenants in Australia more control, flexibility, and choice in how they pay rent—provides the majority of growth over time.

RentPay contributed 25% of total revenues for the quarter, generating A$172,000 in Q1, a 70% YoY increase, while over A$350 million in rental payments have been transacted on the platform.

Active RentPay customers crept above 10,000 for the three months ending 30 September, a 23% quarter-on-quarter increase. Rent.com.au also remarked that the company has a 4,000-strong pipeline of new customers to be onboarded.

Meanwhile, ARPU rose 28% YoY as customers continued to adopt additional payment methods. RentPay is now generating A$6.53 ARPU per month.

Bader said:

"Our best ever quarter of growth for RentPay and reflecting great work by our team to reach this significant milestone.

"Our brand and product awareness continues to improve as we engage with agencies both directly and through major industry conferences. Recent press coverage around payment surcharging only helps strengthen our position further because not only does it make payments topical, but some of the concerns raised regarding overcharging and tenants' right to mandatory free payments methods, play straight into our strengths as the leader in the segment in terms of fairness and choice.

"Our goal is to scale customers as quickly and as efficiently as we can so our sales and marketing activity is focusses on agent partners because this is a faster and more cost-effective channel."

Bader also highlighted that PayPal has recently been added as a payment method on the RentPay platform and that the business has already processed more than A$40,000 in rental payments in the past two weeks.

Bader said:

"We are deliberately driving a shift in the Company's revenue profile towards a more stable, annuity-style income that is not as exposed to seasonal and market variations like the search portal is. 25% of group revenues now come from RentPay's subscription revenues rather than one off transactions. This is almost double the proportion it was just a year ago."

Watch Online Marketplaces' interview with Greg Bader below: