So, where should you be advertising?

There are hundreds of Internet Listing Services (ILS) to choose from. We’ll break down the best sites, their pros & cons and how you can syndicate your rental for the fastest leasing. Our research is based on our RentEngine data combined with our industry experience.

How they work

All of these platforms work the same way: post your listing (free or paid) and get notified via email when a prospective tenant is interested. After that, everything moves off-platform to give them the showing, follow up and collect the application. Once it’s leased, simply deactivate your listing to stop getting new lead notifications.

Many of these websites now offer tools to help small landlords, like tenant screening and payment processing. And for larger apartment buildings they have a suite of paid advertising tools to boost online traffic for those units.

More is always better

Before we dive into it, I’d like to emphasize that more is always better. Getting your rental on more sites will lead to more views, which leads to more contacts and more showings. So don’t feel like you just have to pick 1-2 websites for advertising. Instead, get your property listed on as many as you reasonably can.

Ranking The Top Listing Websites

Tier 1 Websites

These are the undisputed kings of the market and you need to be advertising on at least one of these websites.

\ 🟢 Zillow

60 million monthly visitors

The single-biggest brand in real estate search, Zillow is the starting point for most real estate searches. They have a modern user interface with an easy-to-use map and filters. You can add most property types for free in just a few clicks.

Unfortunately, Zillow has started requiring payment for more features (like multiple listings or feed management). Plus they require an advertising contract for any larger properties, which can quickly eat into your leasing budget. Plus we’ve noticed that they are investing more heavily into the “For Sale” side of the platform, with only a few recent features released on the renting side. But you can still benefit from their useful Zillow Rental Manager tools (tenant screening, lease management, collect payments)

Takeaway: best overall site, with easy interface and good tools for smaller landlords

🟢 Apartments.com

45 million monthly visitors

Apartments.com is the only Tier 1 website that is 100% focused on rentals. Unlike Zillow and Realtor.com, there are no homes for sale here. That means you can expect lots of relevant traffic.

However, they were the first website to aggressively grow their revenue via advertising. Most large apartment buildings spend thousands of dollars per month to rank above regular listings. That means that your listing will likely get buried in the page, making it hard for good prospects to find you.

Their user interface is also often described as clunky, with hard to navigate listings pages and a buggy map view.

Takeaway: tons of relevant traffic, but you’ll need to spend $$$ to get visibility

🟢 Realtor.com

41 million monthly visitors

Keeping a close relationship with the National Association of Realtors (hence the Realtor trademark), this website is more focused on for sale homes. However, their rentals interface is great with easy-to-navigate listings and surprisingly well-designed search page.

Plus they have an excellent notification email with the prospect’s desired move-in date, number of days looking, phone number and email (this is much better than what Zillow or Apartments.com offer). And it’s completely free to list your rental with their Avail tool.

Takeaway: great interface and notification emails, less traffic than the other two Tier 1 websites

Tier 2 Websites

Either recently started or rebooted, these sites have invested heavily in creating a better experience for renters (and only focus on rentals). They get much less traffic than Tier 1, but have loyal users.

\ 🟡 Zumper

7 million monthly visitors

Although started with a bold mission to make booking an apartment as easy as an Airbnb, they now function like all the other websites on the list. We do give them credit for an exceptionally well-designed interface and distinctive branding. And it’s free to post any number of units!

Takeaway: A good secondary website to list on, especially if your rental appeals to a younger crowd.

🟡 Apartment List

5 million monthly visitors

ApartmentList has the most unique tenant experience, with a heavy focus on personalized recommendations. They push each visitor to share their exact needs (e.g. neighborhood, laundry, parking) and then only show the rentals that fit these criteria. While this sounds good in principal, I expect that most website visitors bounce during their 10+ page questionnaire.

They also suffer from the same issue as Apartments.com, where paid listings from large apartment buildings crowd out the regular listings from small landlords. All listings are pay-to-post.

Takeaway: Good for medium and large apartment buildings, not worth it for small multifamily or single family rentals.

🟡 Rent.com

Unknown monthly visitors, likely 20-30 million

The oldest of the Tier 2 websites, they’ve invested heavily in a modern website and search functionality. They also have divisions that focus on lead nurturing and reputation management for large apartment buildings and national property managers. All listings are pay-to-post

Takeaway: expensive and not geared towards small landlords

Tier 3 Websites

Many of these sites were popular in the early 2000s, but have not consistently invested in user experience or search engine optimization. they don’t get much traffic and most are owned by one of the major networks:

ForRent.com
ApartmentFinder
Hotpads
Trulia
Apartment Guide

Marketplaces

These are the leading marketplace websites where you can also list your rentals. They get insane amounts of traffic, but usually much lower quality leads than the dedicated websites

🟠 Craigslist

A legend of the classified world, their simple and old-school interface hasn’t changed since the 90s. It’s free and fast to post your rental, but beware of scammers who will copycat your listing to other websites. Most tenant leads tend to be lower income and oftentimes unqualified.

Takeaway: good for low-rent properties and room rentals

🟠 Facebook Marketplace

Craigslist’s bitter rival, Facebook Marketplace wins for its super easy interface for posting and searching rentals. However, scams are a major problem here. In particular, be aware of the common scam where a “prospective renter” sends you a verification code. They are trying to register your phone number for a Google Voice spam farm. In our experience, most of the tenant leads are low quality tire kickers. It’s ok for posting room rentals.

\ Takeaway: good for room rentals, lots of scammers

Additional Considerations

Furnished rentals

You can use most of the listing websites above, but make sure you put “furnished” somewhere in the description and check the box when creating the listings. This helps ensure that prospective tenants will find you when looking for furnished apartments.

There are a handful of websites focused specifically on furnished rentals, usually mid-term (1-12 months). Check out Furnished Finder, CorporateHousing.com and Kopa.

Room rentals

Zillow recently released a feature that allows room rentals. Just make sure that you select that while posting your listing there. Otherwise, none of the other major listing sites currently allow room rentals.

For best results, you should also post on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace and niche websites like Spareroom and Roomster. If it’s furnished, then you can also use Furnished Finder and Airbnb.

We have heard of landlords also getting good results via dedicated Facebook groups (e.g. “Miami rooms for rent”)

Affordable Housing

For rentals that are a good fit for Section 8, you should post on AffordableHousing.com. This is the premier site where Section 8 voucher holders search for their next place. They also have some great paid tools for featured advertising and directly contacting tenants who are moving soon. Also Craigslist works well for low rent properties.

RentEngine's Recommendation

Phew, that was a lot of information! Now that you know all the options, let’s figure out the best option for you:

Next steps

Now that you know which websites to post your rental, you’ll need to capture high-quality photos:

👉 RentEngine Blog: How to take killer rental photos

Lease Faster: Where to list your rental

How to spot and prevent application fraud

Rental showings: What are they and how to pick the right one for your rental property

How to make the perfect Zillow listing

Increase Your Leasing Conversion Rate - 4 Tactics