Special offer

Zillow Announces Rental Listings!

Reblogger Pat Fenn
Services for Real Estate Pros with Marketing Specialist for CJ Realty Group/Cindy Jones Broker

We will be adding a few rental listings to see if it increases traffic.

The first one to add is a Belmont Bay Waterview Condo

Original content by Sara Bonert

I have an investment property in Florida. In the last three years, twice I’ve listed it for sale. Twice I’ve ended up renting it. Twice I’ve relied on my agentto help me with the decision making that took me down this path to simply get the home occupied. It is a big reality that today’s real estate market is forcing many people, like myself, to wear the landlord hat because of market conditions.

Today I am excited to announce that Zillow is expanding its marketing services to not only include homes FOR SALE, but now also include the ability to market homes as being FOR RENT.

Zillowhas always been a little different than other real estate sites because our foundation is a data base of ALL homes, not just homes that are currently on the market. Today we have about 93M property records on the site, with about 3.6M of them having been flagged as being for sale. Because of this, we get people in all stages of home ownership, from renting to buying to owning.

According to the U.S. Census American Housing Survey 2005, there are 34M rental households in the US, with 53% of rentals being 4 units or less and 30% being single family homes. And when we look at the 8M+ people that visit Zillow each month, nearly 1M of them are exclusively renters with untold others “on the fence” on whether to buy or rent.

So what is Zillow’s new product?

  • Zillow offers a Featured Rental Listing for just $9.95 for 180 days. Featured Listings are sorted to the top of search resultsand receive six times more views than non-featured listings.
  • Rich rental listings can be created with unlimited photos and detailed property information, and you only have to post this information once for up to 180 days.

How will people find my Rental Listing on Zillow?

  • Of course we’ll have the standard search, but we couldn’t just stop there.
  • Zillow has built the industry’s first search by monthly payment– allowing users to simultaneously search for homes for sale and for rent based on a monthly payment they can afford. (monthly payment on homes for sale will be calculated using that day’s mortgage rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage rate, assuming 20% down)

Zillow’s goal is to help people make intelligent and informed choices in all stages of life – whether they are renting, deciding whether to rent or buy, shopping for a home today, refinancing, remodeling or just dreaming. With the addition of rental listings and search, we are giving our users another tool to help them throughout their decision making process.

Click here to experience the For Rent search on Zillow.

Announcement on the Zillow Blog.

Post a home for rent.  

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Comments(4)

Michele Reneau
Certified Staging Professional (CSP) Elite Instructor - Summerville, SC
Realtor, GRI ~ Charleston, SC Relocation Experts Team

Pat-I hadn't heard this news yet. Thanks for the reblog. I'll be checking it out too and adding some of our rentals.

Dec 16, 2009 12:26 AM
Sara Bonert
Zillow - Atlanta, GA
Real Estate Internet Marketing

Thanks for  the reblog!  I'll be curious to hear how it goes for you!  I think this is going to great thing for the site.  When you enter your rental, it will be featured at the top of search results, so it'll get great exposure.  Good luck!! 

Dec 16, 2009 12:56 AM
Pat Fenn
Marketing Specialist for CJ Realty Group/Cindy Jones Broker - Springfield, VA

Michele-it will be interesting to see if it attracts more attention to our rental listings.

Dec 17, 2009 01:46 AM
Pat Fenn
Marketing Specialist for CJ Realty Group/Cindy Jones Broker - Springfield, VA

Sara-we will let you know if we see an increase in activity for our rentals.

Dec 17, 2009 01:46 AM