On July 17th, 2004 the first auction for an apartment listing with RentBid was held.  We had 21 visitors to our open house. We're proud to say it went for the asking price of $825. The winning bidders were Jon McCardle and two of his friends. All three are in college in Albany and were so excited about the place, they placed a bid on the apartment even before the open house ended!

Another great sign is that a few property managers representing over 100 units showed up after seeing the report on us on Capital News 9 in Albany.

The bidding war is on in Albany. Lawrence Lewitnn and Aaron Russell are the founders of the online business RentBid.com. They decided it would be a great idea to put an apartment on Myrtle Avenue in Albany up for auction.

Neither is from this area, so why did they pick the Capital Region?

"It has a lot of students, which we think would be more likely to use it -- more Internet savvy. A lot of young professionals, a lot of politicians, government officials who are coming in and out," Russell said.

Michael Boots owns an apartment on Myrtle Avenue and jumped right on board when Russell asked him to put his place on their website.

"I think the single most thing is it will save them a lot of time," he said.

And time is something we could all use a little more of, but are there any other benefits to using the Internet to rent out an apartment?

"It's kind of a one-stop shop for many potential tenants. They can go online and look at everything that is offered in the Albany area at one time,"

Boots said.

Now this is the first apartment to go up for auction on the website. But Lewitinn and Russell said if it works out, it could lead to bigger and better things.

"In terms of where we're going to go in the next couple of years, I think we are going to revolutionize the entire real estate business," Lewittin said.

Bidding on the site is free and the founders plan on putting another Capital Region apartment up for auction soon.