Zillow Rental Manager No Longer Free!
Most Popular Reply
Rental Property Investor · Sioux Falls, SD · Member since 2015 · 9k+ posts · 18k+ votes
5yThe pay per listing model has some advantages:
1. Any listing on Zillow has a credit card behind it, which reduces the risk of scammers. Look at what happened to Craigslist in most markets. Overrun by scammers and Craigslist has no revenue for moderators. Zillow can maintain higher quality listings which is good for their customers.
2. Landlords used to advertise properties 30-60 days before they were even available or leave the listings up after they were rented. This resulted in lots of extra properties that were really not available. With the pay model, landlords will be careful to only advertise active properties. That means a better user (tenant/customer) experience.
3. For landlords who choose to use Zillow, there will be less competition. Some landlords are too cheap to spend $10 to get their place listed. That means there will be the same number of customers (tenants) but less landlords, so better chance of finding a tenant.
Bottom line is this is a business. My properties cost over $50 a day when they are vacant. If I can advertise on Zillow and get a tenant in the property even one day sooner, it saves me $40. I will continue to use Zillow, but also Apartments, Realtor, Zumper, Facebook and Craigslist. If I find over time that Zillow doesn't produce, I will drop it. My point is in a business it is not about expense, but rather return on investment.
I do think Zillow pushed the cost way too high. Going from $0 to $9.99 per week is crazy. They could have done $2 a week to get people used to paying, then moved it up a dollar every year. I expect other platforms will move to pay models over time.
Bottom line, nothing is free. Any service offering free listings right now falls in one of these buckets:
1. They are pre-revenue, so their free model is just to attract users.
2. They are collecting and selling user data.
3. They place advertisements on their site.
4. They have a step-up option that costs money.
5. They are non profit
My point is monetization is happening everywhere. Make your decision based on what is best for your business.
35 Replies
- Realtor · Manhattan, KS · Member since 2021 · 62 posts · 54 votes5y
It is a total bummer that Zillow is starting to charge us to advertise. I have been paying the $9.99 because Zillow is undoubtedly the platform that the most potential tenants are browsing on. I have posted properties and had 50+ requests in a matter of days. I figure spending the money is better than risking even one month of vacancy. If you really don't want to pay it though, I would suggest Facebook Marketplace. I have had decent luck on there as well and is 100% free!
- Evergreen Park, IL · Member since 2016 · 138 posts · 59 votes5y
@Luke H. Yeah, it's been that way for a while (at least in the Chicago market). It's a bummer for sure. By far the second best bet is FB marketplace and growing fast. Just make sure to do a couple searches for the best groups in your area to post your listing. We are not using any of Zillows other tools (like their rent collection feature), because it will undoubtedly go to a fee based system soon too and who knows how competitive it will be... Would rather not have to rely on them
- Investor · Fontana, CA · Member since 2020 · 128 posts · 94 votes5y
Craigslist and FB work better for me. Zillow gets tons of leads but none are serious for some reason.
- Investor · San Diego, CA · Member since 2020 · 50 posts · 31 votes5y
@Tammy Mason Going to say the same thing. I thought I got better leads from Zillow but people there are just as flaky. I will just use fb. I’ve gotten most of my renters from there anyways.
- Real Estate Broker · Cody, WY · Member since 2010 · 28k+ posts · 41k+ votes5y
Facebook is free and will usually generate a lot of interest. Use the Marketplace. I also get a lot of leads from Zumper.
The DIY Landlord Book4.7244 Reviews - Rental Property Investor · IL · Member since 2015 · 165 posts · 107 votes5y
It's interesting how certain platforms can have varying quality of leads amongst the responses. I'm with Jefferson- I use Zillow and begrudgingly pay the $9.99 but tend to get the most leads, and they tend to be good leads too. Something else that hasn't been mentioned (perhaps its market specific) is Apartments .com Also free and a quality platform.
- Rental Property Investor · Member since 2020 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes5y
I haven’t had to pay the fee yet luckily however I probably will just because a day of vacancy equals a month of posting fees. I am usually priced right with great pictures and rarely have a listing over 2 weeks. On my last one I tried fb and got a ton of is this still available but that’s where the lead ended. I do plan on switching my screening away from them to rentprep partly for better screening partly principal so they lost at least a hundred there to gain 20. I’ll have noticed there are a lot fewer rentals listed so I assume more people are posting elsewhere which is good for me as that’s just less competition.
- Real Estate Broker · 3412 S. Harlem Avenue Riverside, IL 60546 · Member since 2015 · 6k+ posts · 5k+ votes5y
@Luke H. I am run a 62 unit portfolio in the western suburbs of Chicago, and we use Zillow despite the somewhat annoying fee. We find that we are getting about 2/3 of our tenants from Zillow and about 1/3 of our tenants from apartments.com. I stopped using Facebook marketplace as well as zumper because of the low lead quality. I also use appfolio to manage everything and I found that the myriad of sites that they include for free did pretty much nothing to help me get in front of the right tenants.
- Real Estate Agent · New York City · Member since 2020 · 820 posts · 641 votes5y
I find FB gives a lot of leads but usually kind of cruddy ones!
Apartments.com is solid!
- Rental Property Investor · Sioux Falls, SD · Member since 2015 · 9k+ posts · 18k+ votes5y
The pay per listing model has some advantages:
1. Any listing on Zillow has a credit card behind it, which reduces the risk of scammers. Look at what happened to Craigslist in most markets. Overrun by scammers and Craigslist has no revenue for moderators. Zillow can maintain higher quality listings which is good for their customers.
2. Landlords used to advertise properties 30-60 days before they were even available or leave the listings up after they were rented. This resulted in lots of extra properties that were really not available. With the pay model, landlords will be careful to only advertise active properties. That means a better user (tenant/customer) experience.
3. For landlords who choose to use Zillow, there will be less competition. Some landlords are too cheap to spend $10 to get their place listed. That means there will be the same number of customers (tenants) but less landlords, so better chance of finding a tenant.
Bottom line is this is a business. My properties cost over $50 a day when they are vacant. If I can advertise on Zillow and get a tenant in the property even one day sooner, it saves me $40. I will continue to use Zillow, but also Apartments, Realtor, Zumper, Facebook and Craigslist. If I find over time that Zillow doesn't produce, I will drop it. My point is in a business it is not about expense, but rather return on investment.
I do think Zillow pushed the cost way too high. Going from $0 to $9.99 per week is crazy. They could have done $2 a week to get people used to paying, then moved it up a dollar every year. I expect other platforms will move to pay models over time.
Bottom line, nothing is free. Any service offering free listings right now falls in one of these buckets:
1. They are pre-revenue, so their free model is just to attract users.
2. They are collecting and selling user data.
3. They place advertisements on their site.
4. They have a step-up option that costs money.
5. They are non profit
My point is monetization is happening everywhere. Make your decision based on what is best for your business.
- Real Estate Agent · Cleveland OH · Member since 2015 · 216 posts · 275 votes5y
Zillow was my go to platform but with the 9.99 weekly cost I am actually doing cost / benefit analysis. I find that I do just as well with Facebook Marketplace on lower cost rentals. Now I only consider Zillow for high end rentals, but then I can get the same effect by listing them on the MLS. I never use Craigslist, I have had too many listing highjacked by scammers.
- Real Estate Agent · Cleveland OH · Member since 2015 · 216 posts · 275 votes5y
Our property management system Buildium automatically sends our listing to a number of free listing sites. I get a decent amount of leads from Zumper and Apartments.com. I manually post all our listing on Facebook Market Place. By far I get the most response from Facebook.
- Rental Property Investor · East Wenatchee, WA · Member since 2014 · 10k+ posts · 16k+ votes5y
Originally posted by @Joe Splitrock:
The pay per listing model has some advantages:
1. Any listing on Zillow has a credit card behind it, which reduces the risk of scammers. Look at what happened to Craigslist in most markets. Overrun by scammers and Craigslist has no revenue for moderators. Zillow can maintain higher quality listings which is good for their customers.
2. Landlords used to advertise properties 30-60 days before they were even available or leave the listings up after they were rented. This resulted in lots of extra properties that were really not available. With the pay model, landlords will be careful to only advertise active properties. That means a better user (tenant/customer) experience.
3. For landlords who choose to use Zillow, there will be less competition. Some landlords are too cheap to spend $10 to get their place listed. That means there will be the same number of customers (tenants) but less landlords, so better chance of finding a tenant.
Bottom line is this is a business. My properties cost over $50 a day when they are vacant. If I can advertise on Zillow and get a tenant in the property even one day sooner, it saves me $40. I will continue to use Zillow, but also Apartments, Realtor, Zumper, Facebook and Craigslist. If I find over time that Zillow doesn't produce, I will drop it. My point is in a business it is not about expense, but rather return on investment.
I do think Zillow pushed the cost way too high. Going from $0 to $9.99 per week is crazy. They could have done $2 a week to get people used to paying, then moved it up a dollar every year. I expect other platforms will move to pay models over time.
Bottom line, nothing is free. Any service offering free listings right now falls in one of these buckets:
1. They are pre-revenue, so their free model is just to attract users.
2. They are collecting and selling user data.
3. They place advertisements on their site.
4. They have a step-up option that costs money.
5. They are non profit
My point is monetization is happening everywhere. Make your decision based on what is best for your business.
Good arguments for a paid platform, Joe.
I haven't really used Zillow for rentals. I've only used it for FSBO rental home sales.
Does Zillow support our ask questions in the ad, must answer method? Or do they just hit a button that says I'm interested?
Receiving 50 requests with no other info like Jefferson stated above sounds like a nap-interrupting nightmare. Thanks!
- Rental Property Investor · Sioux Falls, SD · Member since 2015 · 9k+ posts · 18k+ votes5y
Originally posted by @Steve Vaughan:
Originally posted by @Joe Splitrock:
The pay per listing model has some advantages:
1. Any listing on Zillow has a credit card behind it, which reduces the risk of scammers. Look at what happened to Craigslist in most markets. Overrun by scammers and Craigslist has no revenue for moderators. Zillow can maintain higher quality listings which is good for their customers.
2. Landlords used to advertise properties 30-60 days before they were even available or leave the listings up after they were rented. This resulted in lots of extra properties that were really not available. With the pay model, landlords will be careful to only advertise active properties. That means a better user (tenant/customer) experience.
3. For landlords who choose to use Zillow, there will be less competition. Some landlords are too cheap to spend $10 to get their place listed. That means there will be the same number of customers (tenants) but less landlords, so better chance of finding a tenant.
Bottom line is this is a business. My properties cost over $50 a day when they are vacant. If I can advertise on Zillow and get a tenant in the property even one day sooner, it saves me $40. I will continue to use Zillow, but also Apartments, Realtor, Zumper, Facebook and Craigslist. If I find over time that Zillow doesn't produce, I will drop it. My point is in a business it is not about expense, but rather return on investment.
I do think Zillow pushed the cost way too high. Going from $0 to $9.99 per week is crazy. They could have done $2 a week to get people used to paying, then moved it up a dollar every year. I expect other platforms will move to pay models over time.
Bottom line, nothing is free. Any service offering free listings right now falls in one of these buckets:
1. They are pre-revenue, so their free model is just to attract users.
2. They are collecting and selling user data.
3. They place advertisements on their site.
4. They have a step-up option that costs money.
5. They are non profit
My point is monetization is happening everywhere. Make your decision based on what is best for your business.
Good arguments for a paid platform, Joe.
I haven't really used Zillow for rentals. I've only used it for FSBO rental home sales.
Does Zillow support our ask questions in the ad, must answer method? Or do they just hit a button that says I'm interested?
Receiving 50 requests with no other info like Jefferson stated above sounds like a nap-interrupting nightmare. Thanks!
I have learned this is all market dependent. In my market, Zillow has been good for us. We get very few Zillow leads, but all of them are qualified.
Zillow gives the person a chance to fill in their income and other profile details before requesting a showing. We get their phone number and e-mail and just ask our screening questions that way.
If you are not using Zillow and having success other place for free, no reason to pay money. All I meant is if a pay platform delivers better results, pay the money. I may change my mind about Zillow. Now that I am paying, my expectations of performance have increase significantly.
- Multifamily Syndicator · Houston, TX · Member since 2016 · 1k+ posts · 2k+ votes5y
Facebook has worked well, but I hope FB doesn't start charging for that too soon!
Zillow does provide some cool features such as screening and background checks all paid for by the applicant.
- Rock Star Extraordinaire · Northeast, TN · Member since 2015 · 10k+ posts · 17k+ votes5y
Thoughts, in no particular order:
1. In today's market, if you have a place that you have to advertise more than 2 or 3 weeks either your price is too high relative to the quality/location/amenities of your unit or you live in Deadwood and don't have any people.
2. Given #1, if $20 or $30 breaks you to get quality leads - and part of getting quality leads is the quality of your listing, including ad copy, pictures, process, etc - then you are probably in the wrong business.
3. There are free options if you don't want to pay - Apartments.com, FB Marketplace, Craigslist. You can always try them first or side by side with Zillow to see how your lead generation goes. Where I live Craigslist leads are so bad (and so full of scammers) I don't use CL anymore to keep the scams down, and I haven't used FB because I have good leads with Apartments and Zillow but I have been told that there's a lot of low quality leads from FB locally.
4. If Zillow loses enough critical mass, then either they will have to lower their price, drop it altogether, or everyone will simply go elsewhere. I personally like the fact that the cheapo LLs won't advertise there, as it makes our listings stand out even better than before.
Skyline Properties - New to Real Estate · Chicago, IL · Member since 2020 · 11 posts · 8 votes5y
Hi all, this is a great thread full of a ton of insight. I've been told FB Marketplace and Craigslist are two great platforms but having issues with both.. any thoughts?
Facebook Marketplace: I can't seem to customize the title of my listing, it just automatially says "2Bed/2 bath" where I see others have more interesting and incentivizing titles. Additionally, when I go to Marketplace to act as a renter and search for my property, it does not come up in the listings nor the map. Thoughts?
Craigslist: I have had to pay $5 to post my rental. Someone also gave me advice to renew the posting every day so it doesn't get buried, however it requires me to repay the $5. While $5 is not much, it adds up.. and to me if the posting gets pushed way down into other listings I am not sure it is doing much good anyways.
Thanks in advance for any help!
Hi all,
1st, Thanks to everyone for replying with comments and suggestions. Lots of great information.
2nd, I have been using Zillow and sometimes a listing agent. I stopped using Craigslist and yard signs due to scammers, thieves, squatters, low quality leads, and surprise visitors. These issues also made me tighten up my screening process. Zillow isn't perfect, but it sure has lots of good/bad leads coming through.
3rd, I plan to start with FB market place, apartments.com, and Zumper (1st time I've heard of this one) and then go to Zillow.
4th, If you want to know what my results are when I'm done please vote on this thread and I'll put your @ Name in the results reply.
Thanks!@Luke H.
I stopped using Zillow the minute the $9.99 hit my area. Had my wife set me up a FB account simply to access the marketplace. Results are through the roof. I’ll get 75-100 responses I’m first 24 hours. Quick and easy to pre-screen just by going to their FB page and seeing the kind of trash they post. Listed a property last Friday morning, 1st showing a few hours later after screening 60 people in couple hours. Signed lease today. Would have been Monday had we not gotten 2’ snow. With so many interested people, you really get the pick of the litter once you weed through.
- Hartford, CT · Member since 2017 · 19 posts · 10 votes5y
@Luke H. Hi, I own a few rental properties in Hartford Connecticut and my wife just listed one of our apartments and we didn’t have to pay anything where are you located hope this helps
- Hartford, CT · Member since 2017 · 19 posts · 10 votes5y
@Jefferson Simmons Facebook marketplace is free for now. I was saying to my wife about two days ago that they will soon start charging us just give it some more time and see Zillow start charging in certain areas it’s just a matter of time before we have to start paying once they see that they have the volume of people using there service
- Member since 2020 · 33 posts · 15 votes5y
I use avail.co and for $5 they list on multiple sites. Best results I have had over FB/CL/Others.
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