Investor · Philadelphia, PA · Member since 2017 · 38 posts · 6 votes
Just found out that Zillow/Trulia now charges $9.99/wk to list rentals. Evidently this started back in June. I have had great success listing all my rentals through Zillow but going from free to $9.99/wk is a bit of a shocker. I posted my current rental on Apartments.com and Craigslists for free but the response rate definitely not as good as Zillow. May have to bite the bullet and chalk it up as another cost of doing business. What do you use to list or any suggestions?
No one is judging you. I just told you what to do, and what I thought about your financial situation if you can't afford a $10 per week listing fee.
Fact is that for a service as powerful as Zillow, and the fact that most people seem to get their places via Zillow, it's now become one of the top services for finding tenants and for tenants to find places. Frankly I think $10 a week is a bargain, if you want to have a discussion.
The other option, again for discussion sake, is Facebook Marketplace. I listed my open rental approximately 10 months ago on it and had no less than 100 people inquire. The problem is, all 100 -- not exaggerating -- never got to the point of even seeing the rental. I believe they just type in the standard message to every open spot and either do something else or go see only a select few? I'm not sure.
I suggest not being a cheapskate and paying the $10. If you have to be worried about a $10 listing fee for your apartment, I'd go and check your numbers and make sure this place isn't costing you money.
No one is judging you. I just told you what to do, and what I thought about your financial situation if you can't afford a $10 per week listing fee.
Fact is that for a service as powerful as Zillow, and the fact that most people seem to get their places via Zillow, it's now become one of the top services for finding tenants and for tenants to find places. Frankly I think $10 a week is a bargain, if you want to have a discussion.
The other option, again for discussion sake, is Facebook Marketplace. I listed my open rental approximately 10 months ago on it and had no less than 100 people inquire. The problem is, all 100 -- not exaggerating -- never got to the point of even seeing the rental. I believe they just type in the standard message to every open spot and either do something else or go see only a select few? I'm not sure.
Twenty or more years ago we would have to put an ad in the newspaper with all kinds of silly abbreviations to keep the ad as small as possible, because the newspaper publisher had to be paid for such ads and charged per line of text that was printed.
Be glad you can write out as much text as you want, and even include pictures, for a nominal charge.
Having said that, there was another thread on this topic where I tried to see if TurboTenant was charging to place ads on the Zillow network of sites; that could be a solution, and even if not they will post to lots of sites to increase exposure. See link:
We just learned this as well - I think it's kind of ridiculous that they charge. The reason Zillow is #1, is because it was FREE. Otherwise there would be NO listings and it would be the LAST place people would go.
You would think they would have learned from Craigslist. Craigslist use to be the #1 place to search for anything, but then they started to charge for certain categories... it quickly has gone downhill. Our rental listings are free, we still post there, but the number of quality leads have dropped. To be honest, the same is with Zillow - lots of leads, 1/3 reply back to you... and now I have to pay $10/week?
That said - as an Real Estate Investor, who always flips things around to search for opportunity, here's how you make $100 Million dollars off of Zillow's mistake of charging ... develop another website that offer a FREE place for landlords list their rental and FREE for tenants to search. Provide many of the bells and whistles that Zillow, or Hotpads provides, and start taking market share away from Zillow... in 2-3 years Zillow will come knocking on your door to buy you up, like they did with Trulia and Hotpads.