Low-cost And Free Property Advertising Guide For Private Landlords

If you’ve got a property to rent, you’re already incurring a lot of costs to finance the property and maintain it. So, many landlords are in the position where they’re unable to spend even more money trying to find new tenants and manage the property.

Sometimes big investments pay off in the private rental sector, but there are other ways to use your hard-earned money than paying large fees to estate agents. And, those fees can be large. In London, it can cost up to 18 percent of your property's annual rent in commission to an agency to advertise and manage the property.

Fortunately, there are low-cost and even free property advertising alternatives that you can use to find new tenants. But, just because they’re low cost, doesn’t mean they’re not effective.

Advertise on Rightmove for £1

In fact, for just a few pounds, you could find your property listed on the country’s top two property websites. And, no one can say they’re ineffective.

We’re talking of course about advertising on Rightmove and Zoopla. Zoopla attracts around 35 million visits every month and Rightmove has a staggering 135 million visits. That’s a massive audience. And, it would only take a small percentage of those visits to give you a great start to your new tenant recruitment campaign.

That’s a realistic assumption because both sites include filters so visitors can narrow down their search by area, size of property, rental value and many other factors, which could bring them right to your doorstep.

If Rightmove and Zoopla sound like an expensive option, they would be if you were in a position to advertise direct. But, private landlords can’t, only qualifying estate agents can. However, we can offer you a low-cost route.

Our service for private landlords costs just £1 to advertise a rental property on Rightmove for seven days. In our experience, a week is usually enough to get a good batch of enquiries. But, if you need longer to find the right tenant, the cost is £29 to go live on Rightmove, Zoopla and OTM for 30 days, and £49 to go live on Rightmove, Zoopla and OTM for 30 days, plus a tenancy agreement template and deposit registration.

Get an online rental valuation in just 60 seconds!

Property marketplace sites for free listings

If your take on a free listing is ‘you get what you pay for’ or don’t pay for in this case, prepare to be surprised.

Property marketplaces are now a proven source for quality tenant enquiries. In fact, some of the portals claim renters use their sites to find properties not listed on the major portals.

HouseShop.com is one of the most popular and it offers some very helpful features. You can list an unlimited number of properties for free and there’s no commission to pay. Tenants contact you directly so you can arrange viewings and there’s even a facility to add a YouTube video of your property.

If you’ve only got a single room to rent rather than a whole property, it’s worth considering SpareRoom.com. Listings are also free and the site is clearly targeted.

Social media

Already, you’ve got a great choice of sites to list your property at virtually no cost. But, don’t forget social media. That could give you an extra dimension and maybe put you in touch with renters who don’t use the main sites.

Facebook, for example, has a marketplace where landlords can list properties for free. There are also local Facebook community pages where you may be able to reach renters in your area looking for properties.

Online classified advertising

Gumtree is a popular online site for many different types of products and services. Its property section has large numbers of listings from both estate agents and private landlords, with almost 39,000 properties for rent listed at the end of October.

The basic listings are free, although you can pay for upgrades that allow you to use extra features and stand out from the crowd.

Find out how Treehaus can help

As we hope you can see, there are many ways to reach prospective tenants at very low cost. But, that’s just part of getting tenants on board and managing your rental property at a profit.

Here at Treehaus, we have a great deal of experience helping private landlords reach their goals. Affordable, highly effective advertising and free valuations are just two of the ways we can help you. We can also help with rent collection, tenancy agreements, offer rent guarantee, a tenancy deposit service, and tenant referencing.