Best Rental Listing Sites to Advertise Your Rental Properties

When managing a collection of rental properties, there are tons of different things that must be done regularly.

These may include maintenance, property notices, evictions, and many more. However, one of the most important things that must be done all the time is displaying vacant rental properties.

When a rental property is vacant, the property manager is essentially losing money on that investment. Since there is no one to pay the rent, they must pay it themselves until a tenant is found.

For this reason, it is essential that property managers consistently list rental properties in many different places to make sure that their properties are not vacant for long.

And the best place to list these rental properties? A Rental listing site.

Not sure where to start? Below, we have outlined the best rental listing sites that you can use to advertise your properties. And the best part is that with these sites, you can do it for free.

So, let's get started with an overview of how rental listing websites even work.

What are Rental Listing Sites?

In essence, a rental listing site is a website where you can advertise your properties for prospective tenants to see. Through the same website, you can also do things like list important property details, find out about recent real estate trends, and even search through credit reports.

Some of these sites require some sort of payment in order to use their services, like a subscription. However, in this guide, we will only be going over sites that offer their services for free.

That way, you don't have to worry about fitting these services into your budget, and you can begin putting up rental listings right away.

So, now that you know how useful rental property listing sites can be, let's look into some of the best choices out there for you.

In this guide, we will be going over the top 10 free rental listing sites for landlords where you can list your rental property online for absolutely no charge.

Top 10 Best Rental Listing Sites

Zillow

Best For: Overall Rental Listing Website

First up on the list is the very popular rental listing site, Zillow. Zillow rental manager has been placed first because of its large collection of data and rental tools that it provides to the landlord as well as to future renters.

One of the most important factors that Zillow has over the rest of this list is its impressive database. With over 135 million homes and apartments up for rent or for sale at one time, it blows every other site out of the water.

Zillow also offers tools like tenant screening and rent collection to make the whole entire process as centralized as possible. You can also review and accept online rental applications straight from the website. However, users report that the rent collection feature could be tricky to navigate when it comes to including other fees, like security deposits and pet fees.

Also, when you are in the process of listing rental properties, Zillow makes it very easy to create informative and attractive listings. This means that your free rental listings are going to attract as many people as possible thanks to Zillow's tools and widgets.

Apartments.com

Best For: Attracting high-quality potential renters

Apartments.com is one of the more powerful rental listing sites that allows landlords to get their listings up in just a few minutes. This website takes the landlord through every single step that it takes to list their property online.

The landlord can add things like neighborhood tags, an amenities list, and a tour schedule. Apart from that, Apartments.com also allows landlords to do things like background checks, credit screenings, and even collect rent.

The reason that Apartments.com is the best rental listing site for attracting high-quality tenants is because of that mobile app. For prospective renters to apply through the mobile app, the cost is $24.99 plus tax for 10 applications in a 30-day period.

This means that every application you will receive is 100% sure of their decision and has looked closely at what the property has to offer in terms of size and amenities.

If you prefer a free rental listing site that is also free for applicants, however, continue reading to discover more options.

Avail

Best For: Tenant Screening

Next up on the list of the best rental listing sites is Avail. Avail, in contrast with many rental listing sites, is not actually the site where you would list your properties. Instead, Avail uses a process called syndication to list your properties on other sites.

The list of sites where Avail puts up your properties includes Zillow, Trulia, Apartments.com, and many more.

The one aspect that makes Avail a very powerful rental listing site is its tenant screening capabilities. With Avail, the tenant screenings go above and beyond criminal background checks. Avail tenant screenings also go into tenant eviction history and advanced criminal checks. These checks go through lists like the terror list and the sex offender list to make sure that the prospective tenant is not on any of them.

This service is exceptional because it means that all the applications submitted are from qualified renters. Also, apart from this service, Avail offers a full rental management platform where you can do things like collect rent online and manage your rental listings from one spot.

Trulia

Best For: Map Data

Next up on the list of free places to list your rental property is Trulia. Although they were bought out by Zillow rental manager in 2014, it still exists as a standalone website. Trulia combines pricing information for homes, combining a plethora of map data with public data to provide a variety of information to prospective tenants.

One of the key aspects of Trulia is that it provides crime maps for the area surrounding certain properties. This makes it easy for people viewing the listing to know exact crime data for the area they are interested in. And, since this information is supplied by CrimeReports.com, the information is accurate and reliable.

Another key aspect of Trulia is that it combines various key data points, like schools and transit systems, to provide the user with a score in each category. For example, Trulia will take the ratings of every school in the area of comes up with a score for each property based on the schools around it.

Zumper

Best For: Quickly filling vacant properties

Next on the list of the best sites to list your properties is Zumper. Zumper offers functionality to their users that is slightly different than that of other sites. With Zumper, landlords can quickly create listings that are attractive to tenants and will gain a lot of attention.

The interesting part comes in when the tenant is interested in a property. When a prospective renter is interested in a property, they can pay a small reservation fee and take it off the market. The point of the reservation fee is to make sure that the user making the payment has carefully considered all of the property's aspects and is serious about the inquiry.

Once the property is off of the market, the landlord can do things like schedule a tour, draft a lease agreement, and even sign the lease agreement. This makes for a completely digital process of listing your property and renting it out. However, some of these features are only available through a tool called InstaRent. Although all other functionality of this site is free, this particular feature will cost you $99, with the first listing being free.

ForRentUniversity

Best For: Student housing

The next entry on our list of rental listing sites is directed towards student housing and is ForRentUniversity.com. Using the resources of ForRent.com, ForRentUniversity tailors search results to universities while keeping students, faculty, and staff in mind.

The way that this site works is that instead of searching for a city or a town, the user searches for a university. Then, the website presents the best picks for properties located around that university.

After that, ForRentUniversity provides tons of information on how to go about doing things like signing a lease, hiring a property manager, or picking out a property. However, this site does not only cater to students searching for properties. There are also sections with oodles of information for parents that are searching for rental housing for their children.

Also, since ForRentUniversity is a sister site of ForRent.com, they have a large and plentiful database of properties to use. This means that you will not be missing out on any properties and will be shown an impressive amounts of properties around popular universities.

After55.com

Best For: Senior living and retirement communities

Being the only option specific for senior citizens on this list, After55 takes the next spot on our list. After55 is an all-inclusive senior housing and care search platform designed to connect seniors, family members, and caregivers to tools that assist them in searching for housing.

The unique aspect of this site is that it specializes in advertising senior citizen communities and housing that is specific for people over the age of 55. Not only does this website display properties for senior citizens, but it also displays facilities like nursing homes, assisted living, and retirement communities.

This makes After55 the perfect one-stop shop for people over the age of 55 to search for places to live. Also, with the wide assortment of tools offered to users, the entire search process is easy and seamless. Users can even specify the level of senior care that is required and properties are refined appropriately.

CorporateHousing.com

Best For: Short-term housing

The next entry on our list is CorporateHousing.com. This website is also made for specific purposes, specializing in finding short-term housing for users. This kind of service is perfect for people who just moved or people who are on an extended vacation.

Some of the things that this website offers include a variety of temporary housing options. These options can range from extended stay hotels to corporate apartments, to privately owned houses. And, since there are typically no leases to sign, you can quickly move into the property that you have chosen.

The best part is that you can specify your needs when conducting searches. For example, if you specify that you are going on a vacation, CorporateHousing will display mostly vacation properties that are meant for vacations.

Rentometer

Best For: Comparing rental properties

Rentometer is the next choice on the list. This advanced website provides tons of information for each rental property that users look at. With every search, Rentometer pulls in various key metrics to make sure you are getting the full picture of a property.

One of the key aspects of Rentometer is that it provides exceptional comparison services. What this means is that if you are ever stuck between a handful of properties, Rentometer provides various comparables, like in price and crime statistics, to help you make your choice.

The downside of this website is that it is not completely free. Although you can get a free 7-day trial, there is a subscription after that. With the free version, however, you can still view the mean and median rent prices around a certain area to determine whether the rent that you are charging for a property is too much or too little.

DoorLoop

Best For: All-in-one property listing and management

Last on our list of rental listing sites is DoorLoop. DoorLoop is an all-in-one property management software that provides tons of functionality to its users apart from listing properties.

With DoorLoop, you can quickly and automatically list your rental properties on various popular websites like Zillow, Trulia, and HotPads, & the Apartments.com network of sites. This makes it very simple to make sure that your properties are never empty and you are never losing money.

Apart from listing your properties, some of the features that you will be getting with DoorLoop include:

• A complete property accounting suite: Automate rent collection, accept multiple payment methods, and organize all your accounts in one place
• Convenient tenant portal: Automatically collect rent payments and even communicate directly with tenants from in the app
• Maintenance order management system: Includes everything from a centralized order database to the ability to edit orders in the queue with notes and attachments, assign to vendors, communicate with tenants, and pay vendors all from within the platform
• World-class support: A dedicated account manager trained to help you get the most from the software will respond to any issue within minutes.
• Owner portal that allows you to print checks and offer specialized reports that owners can print out

If you want the basic features, DoorLoop's features start out at $49 per month for up to 20 units. However, the real savings come when you choose the Pro or Premium plans.

So, if you’re looking for a property management tool that can streamline, optimize, and even automate many of your property management processes, try DoorLoop.

Try DoorLoop today.