In the digital era, we all conduct more of our lives online—landlords and tenants alike. A July 2024 survey from Apartments.com revealed that three in four renters search for their next home using rental listing sites and apps. The next most popular choices are apartment community websites and search engines.
Undoubtedly, maintaining a polished digital presence is crucial for landlords, regardless of the size of their rental portfolio. Rental listing websites provide greater property visibility, making it easier to find and secure trustworthy tenants. Some of these platforms can also help you manage your properties and tenants after they establish residency, simplifying all aspects of the rental process.
Since dozens of rental listing sites exist, you might find it overwhelming to decide where to post and advertise your rental properties. Here at TurboTenant, we’ve put together a detailed breakdown of the pros and cons of the 11 most popular options so you can decide on the best rental listing site out there.
More eyes on your listings means more qualified renters.
When picking a rental listing site, remember a few key factors. First, there’s cost — some platforms offer free rental advertising, while others require landlords to pay for their services.
That said, paid listings could translate to more exposure, which represents another key component of rental advertising. To determine whether a website will get your properties the level of visibility you need, research how many views and visits each site has per month. Certain rental listing sites also syndicate advertisements by cross-posting properties to other online platforms, vastly increasing the amount of web traffic you can expect.
You should also consider ease of use. No landlord wants to spend hours deciphering a complicated interface, so choose a tried-and-true platform with positive user reviews.
Last but not least, consider any extra features related to rental management. Some sites offer additional perks, such as rent collection, tenant screening, and tenant communication, under one umbrella. These can all be helpful tools for managing everything from vacancy to move-out.
To ensure a platform is right for you, make a checklist highlighting any must-haves you’d want from a rental listing site to ensure a platform is right for you. For example, maybe exposure is your priority. Perhaps your goal is to keep your marketing costs low. After determining what’s most important, making your final decision will be easier.
Now, let’s look at the 11 best rental listing site options.
Though you have many choices when it comes to rental listing sites, TurboTenant’s robust suite of tools makes it an ideal option for landlords seeking to improve their online presence. As a bonus, landlords can use many features, including rental advertising, for free.
TurboTenant’s advertising functionality offers landlords unlimited listings at no cost, which the platform syndicates to dozens of popular renter sites, including Realtor.com, Craigslist, and Redfin. This feature allows you to maximize the audience for your rental properties while minimizing the work you must do.
Think about it like this: There’s no need to create the same property listing on different websites repeatedly.
Once your listing is live, you can easily accept applications and then screen prospective tenants from the same interface, making filling your vacancy straightforward.
Plus, it is an all-in-one platform that can help you with every aspect of managing your properties, including rent collection, lease signing, and financial accounting software. It puts everything in one easy-to-find location.
So, sign up for a free account today and start seeing results.
Owned by Redfin, Rent.com boasts an impressive monthly audience of more than 45 million users. So, landlords are more likely to fill vacancies quickly and easily, which is a significant bonus for anyone renting apartments or single-family homes.
Further, Rent.com syndicates listings to two other sites, ApartmentGuide and Redfin, which will significantly increase the number of views on your property.
Another factor in Rent.com’s favor is its ultra-simple, easy-to-use interface, which helps eliminate uncertainty in the rental listing process. Plus, Rent.com’s free rent estimator tool helps you determine the best price you can charge for your unit(s).
While listing properties on Rent.com won’t cost you anything, you’ll need to leverage an external screening platform to ensure your next renter meets your criteria for renting your place.
Apartment List showcases more than 5 million different properties, so landlords might have some competition to grab tenants’ attention. On the bright side, though, Apartment List’s unusual features give this rental listing site a definite edge compared to other platforms.
To start, Apartment List bills itself as a “rental matchmaker” and is perhaps best known for providing personalized renter recommendations. All prospective renters fill out a short rental quiz, and Apartment List uses the answers to connect landlords with tenants based on various factors. That way, you don’t have to wait for the right renter to come to you.
The platform is best for tech-savvy landlords since Apartment List uses artificial intelligence and smart algorithms. If that’s you, you can take advantage of everything from 24/7 online tour booking to an AI leasing agent and detailed data analysis. But, those tech-centric features might not matter to landlords who prefer to stay analog.
You should also consider costs. While listing a property is free, Apartment List charges landlords for successfully initiated tenancies. This pricing structure can be costly over time because Apartment List only works with landlords with at least 20 rental units.
One of the most respected and widely known real estate sales websites in the U.S., Zillow offers an impressive number of services dedicated to rental management. These include rental advertising, which gives landlords an invaluable opportunity to get eyes on their available properties.
Roughly 57 million people use Zillow every month, so you have a high chance of reaching quality tenants through the platform. Creating a Zillow listing syndicates it to Trulia and HotPads, furthering your property’s audience. And since the company is already a trusted name in the real estate and rental business, with more than 160 million properties listed, tenants are more likely to reach out and apply for your rental postings.
However, we should note that you may need to splurge on paid premium listings to get the most exposure. Premium listings appear at the top of search results and, as of early 2025, cost $30 for 90 days.
In terms of providing an all-in-one property management platform, Zillow also doesn’t have the most comprehensive solution on the market. Still, it can help you complete tasks like screening tenants, creating leases, collecting rent, and, of course, marketing your properties.
This tried-and-true rental listing site is among the oldest and most commonly used in the rental industry. Since landlords can post local listings on Craigslist, they have a higher chance of hearing back from potential tenants with a serious interest, as opposed to people casually browsing from far away.
Even better, Craigslist is incredibly simple to use and, most importantly, free across most of the United States. The only exceptions are Boston, Chicago, and New York City, where you’ll have to pay a small fee to advertise your rental property.
Ultimately, you can expect a sizable local audience for your rental listings if you advertise on Craigslist. However, you should know the site’s heightened risk of potential scams. Craigslist doesn’t verify users’ identity, so it’s up to you to vet potential renters before you schedule property tours or accept applications.
Part of the Zumper network, PadMapper has a few key features that will appeal to landlords and tenants. Renters can benefit from this rental listing site’s easy-to-use, map-based search function, which is an ideal way for tenants to locate rental properties in their desired area.
PadMapper’s interface is also extremely simple for landlords. The result is a sped-up property listing process because you don’t have to dive into complicated menus just to post your property. Additionally, if you pay for Zumper Pro, listings syndicate to Zumper for improved visibility.
There are a few significant caveats, though. Landlords can list just one property for free without a Zumper Pro membership, and PadMapper is only available in large cities, such as Los Angeles and Atlanta. So, you may have to use PadMapper with another service to cover all your property listing needs.
Zumper offers many advantages for landlords who rent out an extensive portfolio. Under a paid plan, this fast-growing marketplace allows unlimited unit listings, which landlords can manage via a centralized listing dashboard. The site also will enable landlords to respond to tenant inquiries.
That leads us to one of Zumper’s most unique features: Zumper Select. Tenants interested in renting a property can pay a small holding fee to take the unit off the market for 24 hours. At that point, the landlord can answer any tenant questions, screen them, and manage their application. For both parties, this arrangement can relieve stress.
Of course, though, there’s no such thing as a perfect rental listing site. Though Zumper’s user base is growing, its audience is still relatively small compared to other rental advertisement platforms discussed here. So, you may spend more time searching for tenants.
Since Apartments.com is one of the best-known rental listing websites, tenants are more likely to make serious inquiries about your property, saving time and trouble for both landlords and renters. Similarly, Apartments.com’s rental management tools are also among the best in the business.
So, not only can you find reliable tenants quickly and easily, but you can also run your properties and communicate with those tenants in one place.
Listing a rental property on Apartments.com is simple, and landlords can be as detailed as they want. To help showcase your rental unit in the best light possible, you can include information on whether it is pet-friendly and a breakdown of utility costs and amenities.
Meanwhile, renters enjoy the convenience of scheduling tours, requesting more information, and applying to rent, all without leaving Apartments.com.
Let’s get back to listings. Apartments.com rental listings are syndicated across the far-reaching CoStar Group network, which includes ForRent.com, ApartmentFinder, and Westside Rentals. While all these rental listing sites are hugely popular, this popularity can be a double-edged sword. Depending on the location of your rental unit, your listing has to compete with dozens, if not hundreds, of other properties. In other words, cutting through the noise and finding the right tenants could present challenges.
Like Craigslist, landlords can use Facebook Marketplace to appeal to interested locals, providing a more targeted and direct rental advertising experience. Also, like Craigslist, Marketplace is very simple to use. There’s no need to jump through a complex series of hoops. For the budget-conscious, Facebook Marketplace is free and allows instant communication with potential renters on Messenger.
This feature could attract many landlords who want to save money by marketing their rentals themselves and eliminating the need for a property manager or rental agent.
Naturally, you’ll also need to be wary of scams and bots on Facebook Marketplace. And since Facebook Marketplace is just that — a marketplace — you can’t expect to find any extra features to help you manage your rental property or screen potential tenants.
RentRedi is a property management software operated by Realtor.com. As a result, all rental listings automatically cross-post to Realtor.com, significantly improving your properties’ exposure. You can also choose to syndicate your listings to Zillow or share links on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist to boost visibility even further.
In addition to rental advertising, you can use other aspects of RentRedi’s detailed property management software to fill vacant units. Landlords can handle tenant screenings and custom rental application processing in one convenient place. And since RentRedi has mobile app support, you might not need to sit at your computer.
RentRedi’s features extend beyond the listing process. It offers online maintenance tracking, rent collection software, and financial accounting, which will benefit landlords and tenants in the long run.
That said, you don’t get all of these great services for free. A subscription to RentRedi will cost landlords somewhere between $12 and $30 a month at the time of writing in early 2025. So, you’ll have to determine whether you need all these bells and whistles to advertise and run your rental property.
Property management software Avail, also owned by Realtor.com, allows landlords to advertise their rental properties for free. The platform syndicates listings across many of the sites mentioned above, including Apartments.com, Apartment List, and Zumper.
Like other property management programs, Avail helps landlords run their rentals beyond simply advertising. The software’s other top features include online rent collection, digital lease management, and tenant screening.
In fact, you can pick and choose what you might need from Avail’s screening services — whether that’s the most basic search available or a highly detailed report — so you can rest assured that you’re renting to trustworthy tenants.
While Avail provides most of these features for free, including the ability to manage as many units as you need, you may want to upgrade to the paid Unlimited Plus membership to access expedited rent payments and customizable leases. At $9 per unit, it’s not a bad deal, but it might be costly for large-scale landlords.
Every landlord needs a place to advertise rental properties online, but starting from scratch is unnecessary. These 11 rental listing sites will help you connect with good tenants, fill vacant units, and, in many cases, even manage your rental properties.
If you’re looking for a rental listing site and property management program to save you valuable time and money, try TurboTenant. In addition to advertising your rental properties for free, you can also accept rental applications, screen tenants, manage leases, and more. And if you’re wondering how to start advertising an apartment or home for rent, don’t worry — our software guides you through the steps.
Sign up for a free TurboTenant account to learn how we can help you list your rental properties, fill vacancies, and streamline the entire process.
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