Where to list rentals.....

Question

Hello-

Looking for suggestions on where to list my rental property online.  I just posted it thru Zillow Rentals, but was interested to see what other sites people have had success with.

Thanks!

Account Closed · Answer

@Jennifer Salazar Rentalutions also allows you to list your unit across a multitude of sites such as Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads, Padmapper, Apartments.com, ApartmentList, and WalkScore. You just create one listing and all the leads are streamlined back into one site and you can start direct communication with each potential tenant. On average, landlords receive 15-20 leads every 2 weeks. It is also completely free for your first unit on the site.

Dawn P. · Answer

I use Zillow, Craigslist, and Cozy, which also posts on Realtor.com. I always get tons of inquiries from Zillow, but it seems like 95% of those never reply when I try to contact them.

I'll keep using Zillow, but all of my renters so far have come from Craigslist and Cozy.

Steve Bracero · Answer

@Jennifer Salazar

Zillow, CL, and Cozy, MLS is a great start! Also FB-

Cozy is free to use as well!

Nerissa Marbury · Answer

Account Closed How did you go about targeting the law school? I would like to do something similiar with a medical school near my property; however, the online listing system the med school offers students is only accessible via faculty/staff and students. So I'm looking for other ways to get my property exposed to the med school population. Any suggestions based on your experience with the law school?

Account Closed · Answer

If you have a particular tenant pool you want to draw from, you can be more targeted in where you advertise - for instance, I loved law students and eventually targeted the law school on campus next door to the apartment building I managed.

I otherwise only ever advertised on Craigslist.  I figured, if I hated using Zillow or Trulia or any of those other sites, so would my tenants lol.  If you list your criteria in your Craigslist ad, it helps cut down on the number of unqualified responses.  And I learned to let all calls go to voicemail, then only call back the ones that sounded sane.  Then, I'd go over the qualifications with the ones I called back.

Oddly, my ads would still somehow end up on Zillow, etc.  They apparently glean from Craigslist.  Or maybe from Yelp?  But, calls from Zillow were few and far between.  I don't think it has much respect in the real world - it's bots are so off base regarding pricing, it's crazy.

Walt Dockery · Answer

I recently rented my first rental property.  I listed on Zillow (which as mentioned also posts on trulia and hotpads, which I previously had never heard of), craigslist, posted on facebook, and stuck a "For Rent" sign in front.  I set up a google voice account and used that number for the listing.  I had what I consider pretty good interest with probably 30+ people contact me in ~2 weeks.

I had only 1 person contact me from the craiglist ad.  Ex that one person and a handful from word of mouth, probably just over half of interest came from the zillow/trulia listing and just under half from the yard sign.  Zillow has a form people can use to email you or they can call.  The zillow listing had a lot of details and very good pictures, so the people who called from the yard sign I referred to the pictures on zillow before showing.

Surprisingly, every single person who contacted me seemed to be a legitimate potential tenant in the market to rent, more than half of whom scheduled showings (I could have paired this number down by screening over the phone, since this was my first time listing a rental I figured I might as well show as much as possible, if nothing else just to gain the experience, get feedback on the property etc.) and every person who scheduled a showing showed up and showed up on time.  This shocked me, as normally if I list something for sale on the internet (like say an old piece of furniture for sale) it seems like the ratio of scammers and weirdos to legitimate buyers is about 10 to 1, that did not appear to be the case for the rental which was a nice surprise ... I had expected to deal with a healthy number of no-shows, con artists, lowballers, window shoppers, and general weirdos, that did not appear to be the case.

Jennifer T. · Answer

I haven't tried it myself yet, but I've seen rental ads on Nextdoor.com and they usually have a few responses.  It's more like a "what's going on in the neighborhood" kind of site with posts from users.  But local businesses and landlords will also post ads.  It's very area specific, which I like for posting a rental ad.

On the negative, I actually just tried to set up an account for a different neighborhood where I have a new rental posting.  It can be done but, for some reason, the site makes it a real PITA.  But it seems great and it's free for the next time I have a rental opening in my own neighborhood.

Christian Nachtrieb · Answer

Zillow has been super annoying, it won't list my rental property even though the status says, "Posted." Never heard of Cozy but just checked it out and really liked the look and feel of it. Setting it up as we speak! Thanks for the recommendation.

Jennifer Salazar · Answer

I usually have success with Zillow- but there seems to be a lot of unresponsive people lately.  I posted everywhere you all suggested!

Much Thanks!

Where to list rentals.....

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