This story appears in the March 2025 issue of Utah Business. Subscribe.
The old adage says that the three most important factors when judging real estate are “location, location, location.” But in the modern world — with the prevalence of online reviews — it’s equally important to focus on “reputation, reputation, reputation.”
Approximately 75 percent of apartment hunters rely on online reviews or ratings to help them decide which property to rent. This makes sense; renting is a major decision. But most multifamily owners have been quite passive in managing their online reputation.
RET Ventures’ investment in Opiniion was designed to change this reality. Opiniion is a Lindon, Utah-based online resident relations and reputation management platform that drives increased customer reviews and gives companies insights on problem areas, helping them resolve issues before a negative review is made. Selling across a few different sectors, Opiniion began considering its application to real estate, but it didn’t have the expertise to establish product-market fit.
We knew we could help them with that expertise. Since our founding in 2017, RET has focused on guiding growth for technologies that help multifamily owners and operators. We’ve done this in part by raising virtually all our capital from engaged strategic investors — some of the largest multifamily and single-family rental companies — who are committed to shaping the next generation of real estate technology.
Once we decided to invest, we worked closely with Opiniion, connecting the team to our strategic investors to help refine the product for a real estate user base. For example, Opiniion is now optimized to align prompts with the rental process, asking prospective renters for feedback after the most critical touchpoints. Additionally, through seamless integration with real estate-specific CRM platforms, Opiniion gives property teams instantaneous resident feedback, helping to generate more positive reviews. It also helps identify customer pain points, address negative reviews, and make informed decisions that optimize the resident journey.
In the five years since we invested in Opiniion, it’s become a great example of the success of our approach. With a product fine-tuned for its market and a growing number of major real estate firms as users, the company now serves over 1.3 million rental units. In December 2023, the company raised another round of funding. Last year, it went cash-flow positive, marking its continued maturation.
As the multifamily real estate market has seen sluggish rent growth in the last few years, online reputation management flourished as a marketing tool to set properties apart from their competitors. Opiniion is playing an important role in driving activity forward for these firms, and we’re proud to have helped them become the industry powerhouses that they are today.
