Best Apartment Listing Sites

Februar 15, 2024

Best Apartment Rental Listing Sites

Tenants are on the hunt for a better apartment, condo for rent or house for rent.

They turn to Google to find an apartment rental agency. These will range from Apartmentlist to Zumper to Rentals.com and Apartments.com. Their visibility on Google’s search results gives them massive traffic every single day.

Which apartment listing site is best? That would depend on overall userbase, quality of renters, cost, and the quality of the listings.

But what if you didn’t need to choose between them, and instead could subscribe to a service that lets you advertise on the best of them? Would it be an offer you couldn’t refuse?

Yes, ManageCasa’s syndicated listing service saves you the time and effort of reaching renters in your city/town. And the features set helps you write the best listing ad to boost your lead generation rate. Leveraging marketing technology is a big value add for your business.

Top 8 Rental Websites

ManageCasa Connects you to Renters

ManageCasa’s listing advertising service for apartments for rent is even more convenient. Within your ManageCasa account, you can list your properties for publication on the best of 8 major apartment and house rental listing portals including Zumper, RentPath, Apartment Guide, Apartments.com, Rentals.com, Trulia and Redfin.

This deep reach into to the rental market is conveniently manageable via your ManageCasa property management account. You can read more about the vacancy listing websites below and investigate the ManageCasa rental syndication service later.

12 Apartment Listing Websites

In this post, we introduce 12 rental listing sites (some are a part of ManageCasa’s service) for landlords and property managers which deserve your attention. These are established rental listing websites, some with mobile apps and ongoing promotional efforts, which attract quality renters and have a persistent reach — important benefits you’ll appreciate.

Ultimately, it will be up to you to establish whether any of these rental listing sites are a strong fit for your needs.

Criteria for Selecting an Apartment Rental Listing Site:

how much reach/traffic do they have in your specific neighborhood?
how many leads do they create per month?
what is their subscription or cost/per lead or inquiry?
what demographic of renter do they cater to (millennials, families, upscale couples)?
how detailed are the apartment descriptions/features sections?
how well can you fine the exposure of your ad to renters (avoiding bad leads)
will they allow a redirect to your own website?
do they allow you to upload a virtual tour or video?
will your listing be visible on Google, Facebook, or Bing?
if legal in your country, is there any prospect targeting possible?

Check reviews of renters and landlords who have used these apartment rental software companies. There are review sites that can help you gauge renter/landlord experiences with the providers listed below. It can’t hurt to check a few of them, such as: Trustpilot, ConsumerAffairs, Better Business Bureau, and Consumerreports.com.

Example of Business Credibility checks. Screenshot courtesy of Trust Pilot.

Check out these Top Apartment Rental Listing Sites

It’s difficult to qualify all of these apartment rental agencies and aggregators, and it’s up to you to use them at your own risk. Please, note: We’re not recommending any particular listing site or lead generator, however you may find these productive.

1. Zumper.com — Zumper is one of the largest apartment listing sites. They offer listing services for SMB Property Managers. They can help you find your ideal tenant with their proprietary targeting and screening system — renters can search for vacancies on their site specifying a price range and long-term vs short-term lease.

Zumper isn’t a property management software platform in itself although it may help you collect payments. Zumper’s strength is its wide reach and how it collects prospective renter’s credit reports and rental applications, saving you time and complications.

The company just went through a financing round of $60 million. The company is focusing on Millennial renters, though this is not uncommon.

2. Apartmentlist.com — Apartmentlist has been in business for six years and was inspired by the founder’s own bad rental experiences. You can list your 1, 2 and 3-bedroom apartments across the country within an attractive layout that uses maps and pictures of the apartment or condo building.

Users can integrate with Facebook marketplace to reach the potential tenant pool, and utilize Facebook’s own artificial intelligence-based targeting power.

Two benefits of interest from Apartmentlist.com include a renter migration report to help you understand where renters are coming from, and how the site assists renters in finding what they’re looking for. In a similar fashion to how ManageCasa has optimized the digital experience for managing properties, Apartmentlist has created an optimized experience for listing services. This reduces wasted time for them and for landlords like you.

3. Apartmentguide.com — Apartmentguide is an apartment search and information site owned by Rentpath, who also owns Lovely, Rentals.com, and RentalHouses.com. The company was recently purchased by Costar, a giant conglomerate. Costar’s pool of rental sites is bolstered by their research which involves interviews with brokers, owners, and property managers, to ensure their data is up-to-date, trusted and reliable.

Screenshot courtesy of ApartmentGuide.

Apartment Guide claims to offer unmatched search capability, amplified by constantly refined tools and industry insights, content-rich apartment listings in a user-friendly format with Internet, mobile and social media solutions.

They match qualified renters with their ideal apartment home. Apartmentguide’s apartment search function includes floor plans and 360 views of the condominium or apartment complex and with a rating of the rental developments.

4. Sublet.com — Sublet.com offers an interesting twist by introducing apartment sublet opportunities. These may be vacancies that aren’t posted on the regular apartment sites or feeds. This is particularly useful for tenants who wish to sublet an apartment they can’t afford anymore.

If you are a landlord or leaseholder with a place to rent, you can post it at Sublet.com for free. You can post daily, weekly, monthly or yearly rentals and rooms and tenants will contact you directly. Sublet.com also offers tenant screening, employment, and criminal background reports.

5. Craigslist — the world’s top classified ad site has plenty of apartment rentals listed. However, you might find open classifieds are not the place many respectable landlords or property managers would choose to draw tenants from.

Is Craigslist a hot zone for scam applications and for landlord fraud? Typically, the ads aren’t pretty, just a list of amenities and features with some photos and a contact number. The audience may a big question mark for you. On the bright side though, it’s quick to create an ad and Craigslist has immense reach to potential tenants. It’s pretty much wild west on Craigslist. An alternative service is Facebook marketplace.

6. Facebook Marketplace — the world’s largest social media network creates some compelling benefits for landlords looking to list their apartments and rental homes. Facebook marketplace offers a simple service to show a lower-resolution photo slideshow of your rental.

A compelling advantage of a Facebook medium is that buyers and sellers must have FB accounts, which makes fraud a little more difficult to perpetrate. For you, when the renter contacts you, you get the requests for info or unit showing directly in FB.

Perhaps the two strongest selling points of FB Marketplace is its reach to prospective renters, and its ability to specifically target ads to people looking for apartments. FB is very popular and frequently used by renters throughout the day. That means more exposure for you.

Screenshot courtesy of Facebook Marketplace.

Screenshot courtesy of Facebook Marketplace.

You might like the simplicity and speed of creating a FREE rental listing. If you decide to use Facebook ads for bigger reach, you’ll be paying per click, from highly-targeted users. Facebook’s user statistics can give you a better idea of who is responding to your ads and the success of your listing.

7. Trulia — is a large real estate listing site not associated with Realtor.com and the MLS. It’s an alternative to Realtor.com and homes.com and has a unique set of apartments for rent across the US.

The value of a real estate sales portal is the quality of renters may be higher. Typically, their users might be from a higher-income demographic, often renters of townhouses and homes, rather than cheap apartments. If your rental listing is a house or is more upscale, a real estate portal such as Trulia might provide higher quality, financially stable renters with good credit ratings.

Trulia offers Google maps with Map view, street view, and info related to crime reports and schools. They also allow a link to your rental marketing page/website where you can present the rental more thoroughly.

Screenshot courtesy of Trust Pilot.

8. Realtor.com — Yes, Realtor.com, the largest real estate company offers listings of apartments for rent.

This is a top site for Realtors who may have higher quality clients who may pay more for a rental. Realtors typically represent renters with good credit ratings and who have already been pre-screened. This may provide some assurance to you and cut down the number of unqualified prospects you might receive compared to other rental portals and classified sites.

Rental listings on Realtor.com are provided by apartments.com. The real value is Realtor.com’s huge online audience including Realtors who have quality prospective clients who may need to rent. The downside to Realtor leads is that these renters may be eager home buyers in the years ahead, which means you may be needing to fill the vacancy again when they leave your unit to buy a home.

9. Apartments.com — One of the premier apartment rental agencies, Apartments.com (owned by Costar who own Rentpath) features map-based apartment listings, yet doesn’t break down listings by neighborhood. Neighborhood search is preferable to many searchers who don’t know zip codes

With its widespread reach of 60 million visitors, easy online listing process, and number of leases they’ve successfully helped with, Apartments.com is hard to beat. They offer free listings, premium listings, tenant screening, and generate a lease.

Apartments.com is not a property management site. Using standard, non-customized leases in this day and age is risky. Always use a professional level property management software solution in combination with any rental listing sites that you will be using.

Screenshot courtesy of Apartments.com.

10. Rent.com — Rent.com is yet another apartment rental website owned by Costar. The service offers renters a free and convenient way to find the perfect place to live. Online, they provide virtual tours of apartment buildings and condominiums. On the downside, the site doesn’t offer search by zip code or neighborhood and it inserts ads into the search results.

The company conducts surveys of participating tenants about their satisfaction with their units (Certified Resident Ratings & Reviews®). Rent.com verifies sources to meet their strict requirements to ensure the rental property is trustworthy and real. They also offer a service called Legit listings which have either been personally visited or otherwise vetted by Rent.com.

They offer two service levels for landlords with up to 19 properties which includes unlimited leads plus tracking tools, unlimited photos and detailed descriptions along with free applications and screening, for 20+ apartment communities which includes full service support.

11. Forrent.com — Forrent is also owned by Costar and they claim to serve a total renter pool of 50 million. This company provides a huge listing of apartments for rent and is focused on renters. Any listing that you create on apartments.com will be shown on this site. Renters can search via any feature except neighborhood and zip code.

12. Rentseeker.ca — is a Canadian company offering a collection of marketing services for landlords and property managers. The company states that RentSeeker.ca is Canada’s #1 online apartment finder & real estate marketing company. The site features thousands of apartment listings across Canada and is FREE for renters. Services include video upload, walk score for your apartment locations, and listings are published to their site and Trovit.ca which is very visible on Google.ca and other rental portals and Realtor websites.

If you use one or more of these major rental portals, you could be reaching a lot of potential renters and perhaps the exact quality of renter you’re wanting. However, remember that quality of leads is the most important issue when listing an apartment for rent.

By writing your ads professionally, choosing relevant and not misleading photos, accurate descriptions, and legitimate tenant recommendations regarding your rental, you can “screen in” renters who will sincerely want that rental.

How to Write A Great Rental Ad

Before you place your vacancy, read our post on writing your rental ads as professionally as possible and place it well. The writing of the rental advertisement ensures you’re attracting the right tenant, and that you’re getting the most out of the rental site you’re listing on.

Tenants who are looking for available apartment rentals or home rentals will be able to understand your offering and be compelled to inquire. Naturally, the apartment rental site you list on will go a long way in determining what kind of renter you attract.

Wasting time in phone calls, rental home tours, tenant screening, and more can be costly. And in the era of Coronavirus now there is the added issue of health safety when carrying out rental tours.

More than ever you want to write and place your listings well. And you’ll want to be using the best property management software possible to impress tenants about how modern and efficient your property management practices are.

See more on the ManageCasa rental vacancy syndication service.

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