What venues are applicants using to find rental listings?

Question

I'm in northern California and I have posted rental listings on Craigslist and Zillow, but now Zillow is charging a fee and I am not sure if it is worth subscribing to them, so I am down to one option (Craigslist).  Has anyone heard from applicants as to where they are looking for rental listings?

Gavin D. · Answer

Account Closed  Best method I have ever seen.... closest major intersection or road with traffic to the property, if you can find a place (property owner/parking lot) to park your car for the day.  Get the best image of the property you can, and have it printed on a 4X6 lightweight banner (like $30 at print shop) with some catchy phrase like "for rent by owner" in big yellow letters. under that, take the street number of the property (lets say the address is 4676 main street) and add text "FREE 4676 INCH TV"   lastly, CALL (phone number). Tie that thing to your car facing the road.  Go to the property and wait for the phone to ring.  Callers will ask about the TV.... Play it off like the printer was supposed to write the street address on your banner, and "Free TV" on a car dealership's banner, You needed to show the house today, and did not have time to have a new one printed.  Don't schedule anyone, give them directions and let them view the place 4 at a time if that many show up back to back.

Bjorn Ahlblad · Answer

Account Closed we also use apartments.com and facebook. The majority of our traffic is from Zillow; they do not charge here yet.

Mahlon Woirhaye · Answer

Zumper is working well in So. Cal.

Kyle J. · Answer

I’ve used Craigslist, Zillow, and even yard signs. Zillow also pushes their listings to their other platforms, Trulia and Hotpads, so my listings also appear on those sites.

I always survey my applicants to see where they saw or heard about the listing, and Zillow, Trulia and Hotpads have been the top sources lately.

Craigslist is no longer effective. It’s too full of spam from the apartment complexes that continually re-list their multiple ads every day and quickly push the older ads to the bottom and out of view. And then there are all the scammers on there to deal with. Apartments.com is probably okay if you’re listing an apartment, but I don’t have any firsthand experience with it because all my rentals are houses and no one uses it for houses in my area. I’ve heard good things about Facebook Marketplace, but not everyone has Facebook. I don’t even have it. So there’s a segment of the market you’ll always miss with that.

So for me the clear winner is Zillow. Unfortunately I did recently get a notice that they’ll now be charging in California. But I figure it’s just the cost of doing business. Plus I think I can afford $9.99 to rent out a house. After all, that’s considerably less than it used to cost to run an ad in the newspaper classifieds, back when people did that.

Johann Jells · Answer

I thought Zumper was the same as FB Marketplace, is it not? I'm not on FB and have been placing on Zumper as well as CL, Apt.com and Zillow. Weird market: one unit is still sitting after 3 week, another larger at same price in less desirable but "buzzy" hood went in a heartbeat.

Danielle Gray · Answer

Sites I've used in the past to personally find rentals is apartments.com, apartmentguide.com, and rent.com. Craigslist is an option as well as listing with a Realtor or any real estate site such as Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin, and Trulia.

Cara Murray · Answer

We have used Zillow (bummer they are charging), realtor.com, and facebook marketplace. But beware, you will receive a ton of facebook messages with generic questions that you answered in your advertisement. Along with the fact your phone will be dinging at all hours of the night from facebook. But it is definitely a way to get your info out there.

There is also a site called hotpads that I have not personally used it but seems to have a lot of local (Redding) postings.

Best of luck.

Ethan Jacobsen · Answer

I think it can really depend on local trends. Some areas have a very active Craigslist community and others don't. Yes, Zillow is now charging and it will be interesting to see if they continue as the leading listing site, but right now, they definitely bring in a vast majority of our inquiries. We have received some inquiries from Zumper and Apartments.com but I would encourage you to use as many sites as possible. We often list our units on Facebook Maraketplace as that is becoming more popular. There are often housing groups on FB too that you can maybe post to. If you price your unit right, it might not me online long and Zillow might not be too much of an expense.

Just make sure you do that math and think about what a vacant unit "costs" every day it's vacant and not getting rented. If your unit is worth $2,000 per month, it ends up being about $66 per day vacant. So if you're thinking Zillow will help you find someone quicker and better, it's likely worth the investment so you can get it rented sooner. You don't want to lose out of potentially hundreds by worrying about saving $20-$30. Hopefully that makes sense!