What do renters want to see in your listings?

Your website is a great place to market your listings, tell others about yourself, and advertise your services, but are you also posting the information that renters look for? According to the National Association of Realtors, more than 90 percent of house hunters use the internet to begin their housing search. If a renter stumbles across your website but can’t find the information they want, you risk the chance of losing a potential client. Luckily, this is completely preventable. Here are some pointers on designing your site for renters so your website can start working for you. 

The number one goal for your rental website should be to increase your rental leads. Remind yourself of this each time you want to change the layout, use flashy fonts, and fancy plugins. How is each feature adding to your site and improving lead flow? If you can’t justify your actions, maybe it’s better off to hold off on the addition. 

With this goal in mind, here’s a chart we made using data from Rent.com about the most wanted website features: 

From their results, we searched actual rental websites to see what rental professionals were posting:

From these charts, you can tell that:

Renters want listings to be detailed. They don’t just want the number of bedrooms and baths. Include photos of the property and floorplans so viewers can get a better idea of the space. This works in your favor, too, because the more information you give, the longer renters will stay on your website. The key to making your site ‘sticky’ is to keep it simple. Renters don’t want to dig for information - if you present it to them upfront, they’ll stick around because your site is easy to navigate. 

Post the availability date. If renters are searching listings because their lease is almost up, knowing the availability date is pretty important. Planning a move is usually time-sensitive, so help out your viewers by posting the move-in date. This will also help funnel in quality leads and reduce the number of inquiries you get asking for basic information about the unit. 

Include important features. The Rent.com data showed that renters consider floor plans and square footage important features in a listing. We found that many rental websites lacked one or more of these features. Once again, supplying renters with as much information as possible will help filter out unqualified renters. Including important features in your listing will help you generate better leads and increase signed leases. 

For more cool charts and insights to help you improve your rental business, check out RentJuice’s marketing resources, or download a free copy of our e-book: Make Your Rental Website a Lead-Generating Machine. Also check out our blog, where you can get daily updates on best rental marketing practices.