Zillow marketing dying, what else are you using?

Question

10 years ago here In central Virginia craigslist was king for renting out units. Now that Zillow Seems to be fading out of the picture where are you guys posting ads?

Craigslist doesn’t have enough traffic and Facebook leads to too many unqualified applicants. Any other services I’m missing?

Steve Tartakovsky · Answer

Zillow used to be awesome, it’s not free anymore and I’d gladly pay but the usability is very bad now. They will lose everything at this rate. Has anyone had success posting through one of their sister sites like posters?

Ika Sargeant · Answer

@Steve Tartakovsky I just used zillow which is now charging a fee. I posted on realtor.com to see what the response will be. Zillow still produces the best leads. House was rented in a week. Have been using them for more than 5 years. Realtor.com was very disappointing.

Kyle J. · Answer

@Steve Tartakovsky Must be a regional thing. Zillow works amazing where I’m at. Just used it for my last two vacancies and had hundreds of interested people reach out from the postings on their site (as well as Hotpads and Trulia which they push their ads out to).

In fact, I got such overwhelming responses I had to stop answering my phone and responding to all the emails.

Ultimately ended up filling both vacancies in two days too.

I agree with you though that Craigslist is garbage now. It used to be my go-to site for advertising, but now it’s so full of scammers and spam from the big apartment complexes that it’s pretty much useless.

In the same time that I had the Zillow ad up that got me hundreds of responses, I had an identical ad up on Craigslist that resulted in exactly one call. With the second vacancy I didn’t even bother with the Craigslist ad.

Bjorn Ahlblad · Answer

We use apartments.com and Zillow. Tried FB and Craigslist but don't use them.

Jill F. · Answer

Buildium posts to apartments.com, apartmentlists.com, and lovely. They used to post directly to zillow too but now you have to pay set up your own account and pay there and then buildium will post for you. (Zillow group includes trulia and hotpads and aol). I usually post to craigslist and facebook too, I didn't see quite as much traffic as my previous rental but I think it was more due to being right at market price rather than just under rather than not paying for zillow.