Surprising Places to List that Work?

Original post

I've actually had surprising success with FB Marketplace (just unexpected to me honestly). While I list on Zillow and some of the other well-known sites, I was wondering about your experience. What has surprised you guys? Any lesser-known sites that have worked well for marketing properties? Any tactics that are surprisingly effective?

Reply by Phil T

Here in Pittsburgh I get 90 FB marketplace contacts to every 1 contact I get from Zillow. Some areas its the reverse. Just gotta know your market and where your potential tenants are looking to find you….

Reply by Roger Thomas

Marketplace generates lots of inquiries but I've found that they are generally poor quality. Zillow and Avail provide most of my quality inquiries although I have found tenants via Marketplace. You just have to wade through a lot of tire kickers.

To manage the inquiries more effectively, we use a prescreening questionnaire that we send to every inquiry. 80% are never returned which is fine with us as they were probably not really interested or not qualified. Of the 20% that are returned, half are not qualified based on their answers. So, only about 10% of the inquiries we receive actually end up getting a tour of the property.

Reply by Philip A Powell

FB Marketplace has been very effective for me.

Reply by Mose Gebremeskel

Hey Rick, do you plan on STR, MTR or LTR? Depending on that there's some different options. I do MTR and use Furnished Finder and have had some succes on there.

Reply by Kimberly Koester

Roger, a prescreening questionnaire is a great idea! I get most of my traffic from FB Marketplace but I also have a lot of tire kickers. What types of questions are you asking in this questionnaire and what are you using to conduct the questionnaire? Are you emailing or do you use SurveyMonkey or some other service for them to fill out?

Reply by Roger Thomas

We have 11 questions focused on our criteria: We start off restating rent, no smoking, etc, Then we ask desired move in date, is their salary more than $6300 (3x rent), how many occupants, any animals, any felonies, do the smoke, any evictions, any bankruptcies, are the willing to pay $50/person for credit/background check, can we contact prior LLs, do they have a driver’s license or govt issued id. We just copy paste the questions into the DM if it’s messenger or an email if it comes from Zillow or Avail. 80% are never returned.

Reply by Kimberly Koester

Roger, this is so helpful and I appreciate the information. This will cut out a huge amount of time in weeding through those that are just kicking the tires. Thank you so much!

Reply by Roger Thomas

You're welcome. Glad I was able to help.