eBay sells Rent.com to Primedia to concentrate on mobile commerce and payments

eBay has announced that it will be selling off Rent.com, one of its online properties, which has been purchased by Primedia.

This will allow the largest online marketplace in the world to concentrate its efforts on the heart of its e-commerce and payments businesses, including their relatively newly introduced mobile elements.

Rent.com was originally acquired by eBay in 2004, for a purchase price of $400 million. This gave the company an important step into the online real estate marketplace. Rent.com remains one of the biggest American apartment listing services, with primary competition coming from CraigsList and Amazon.com.

Rent.com is currently an element of the Marketplaces businesses at eBay, and it gives users the ability to search for rental properties through the use of a free search tool online. It brings sellers and buyers together, and offers a single platform that gives the ability to share information such as plans, images, details, and pricing. This service comes with a set fee for the property manager or owner, which is paid whenever a transaction has been generated. It is free for the buyer or renter.

By selling Rent.com, eBay has not only given itself the ability to concentrate more fully on the operations of its core e-commerce marketplace, as well as the rapidly growing payments business, but it has also provided itself with a significant amount of cash to pad its efforts to take further steps into the rapidly growing mobile commerce environment.

Currently, about 48 percent of the total value of eBay is made up of Online Marketplaces, while another 27 percent is taken by PayPal.