All Forum Posts by: Corazon B.

@Corazon B. Hi Corazon, I used Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist and Apartments.com for my last rental here in Cape Coral. Had plenty of applicants. 

In the future I will post to those and also use the syndication feature available to me through RentecDirect. 

Also if you plan on renting to people who are on section 8 you can get a hold of the Lee County Housing Authority as they are always looking for places and they currently have a bonus (I believe it is still available) if you rent to someone who has section 8.

My places up in Lewiston, Maine are almost always rented through Facebook Marketplace. 

As others have mentioned, it's your screening process that is the more important than where you get tenants.  The most responses I get are from FB Marketplace but these are also the most useless because, despite posting my requirements even BEFORE describing the rental I've found a large percentage don't even read the ad and the requirements.  I stopped using Craigslist a few years ago because there were so many issues with ads being stolen.

I think how much rent you charge MAY play a role in the quality of the tenant you get.  Or conversely, cheap rent will bring out the poor applicants in droves and those tend to have many personal problems.

yes, the more applicants you have the more options you have.  My point was that you may get responses saying X site is the best, Y site is the best but that only means that is what is the best for those people in the areas they seek tenants out.  The only way to truly know for your area is to place ads on multiple sites or use a syndicating service.  Lots of options in todays world that will allow you to place an ad and do tenant screening all in one, just search this forum for lots of posts similar to yours.  My 2nd point was personally, we get (got) more traffic from Zillow but we placed fewer tenants from that site than any other....but that is just us and just for our local area.   

The only way to know what works locally is throw up a bunch of ads and keep track of how many responses you get from each, how many turn into actual leads, how many see the homes, how many fill out apps, how man you approve.  For us, we can't actually answer this question because it varies depending on the area the home is in.  

@Corazon B. it does not matter where the applicants are coming from the only thing that counts is your thorough screening process.