Where Can Private Landlords Advertise Direct?

When you want to attract new tenants to your rented property, advertising will be essential. The big question is, where to advertise?

If you’ve just got a spare room to let, or you only want to attract local renters, an advertisement in the property pages of your local newspaper or even the corner store might be sufficient. But, if you’re serious about the rental business and want to attract quality tenants from a wider pool, you’ll need to look at other options.

You’ll be up against other landlords in your area, as well as High Street and online agents that handle property letting, so your advertisements must appear in a medium that delivers results. These include national property portals, property marketplace sites, social media sites and classified advertising sites like Gumtree.

Property portals

Major property portals like Rightmove and Zoopla are very effective at reaching tenants. Although they offer national coverage, tenants can narrow their search by location, size of property, rental cost and many other factors.

Their success is reflected in recent results — on May 27th this year, Rightmove recorded the highest level of rental enquiries ever recorded in a single day with six million visits.

Rightmove is the largest of the portals, attracting an average of 135 million visits every month. Zoopla’s monthly visits exceed 55 million. Both portals attract a large number of potential tenants as well as house buyers. Other popular portals include Prime Location and On the Market.

Advertising on these portals helps you reach a much larger audience and can help you find new tenants quickly so you can keep rental income flowing. However, there is one major barrier. As a private landlord, you cannot advertise directly on these portals.

This is because the portals’ main source of income is from High Street and online letting agencies who pay a monthly subscription fee to use the service. In fact, RightMove is used by an estimated 99 percent of estate agents. The portals believe that allowing direct advertising by private landlords would affect estate agents’ business by giving landlords the opportunity to bypass the ‘middleman.’

Fortunately, Treehaus can offer a solution. For a fee of just £1, you can advertise a rental property on Rightmove for 7 days, or for just £29 you can advertise a rental property on Rightmove, Zoopla and On the Market for 30 days.

All you have to do is upload the property details and photographs to our easy-to-use online dashboard and we place the advertisements on the portals. We forward enquiries to you so you can arrange your own checks and viewings.

We believe that this is a practical and very affordable way to use this very effective method of advertising rental properties.

Read More: How To Post An Ad On Rightmove

Property marketplace sites

Property marketplace sites allow both private landlords and letting agents to place advertisements on their sites. They do not have the massive national coverage of the major portals, but they do offer access to a wider market than your local sources.

One of the most popular sites is HouseShop.com, while SpareRoom attracts tenants looking for whole properties as well as single rooms. The good news is that advertising on HouseShop.com is free. And, the operators claim that renters use their site to find properties let by private landlords that do not appear on the major portals.

You can use the sites online ‘ad creator’ to create an online advertisement which will be posted on the HouseShop.com website and other property sites. Enquiries come to you via email so that you can deal directly with prospective tenants.

Social media

Facebook offers users a marketplace where they can offer items for sale. Since 2018, the site has been open to landlords to advertise properties and Facebook claims that this can generate large numbers of enquiries.

As well as using the marketplace, you can also use other Facebook pages, such as local community pages or create your own page. Using social media also means that your advertisement could be shared by viewers who know people looking for rented property in your area, which extends the reach of your campaign.

Classified advertising sites

Gumtree currently lists more than 36,000 properties for rent from both private landlords and agents. The individual property pages provide brief details, photos and a contact link. Basic listings on this site are free, although you can pay for upgrades to make your advertisement stand out in the crowd. Although it can provide large numbers of leads, commentators warn that many of the enquiries may be low quality and some may be scammers., so it pays to be cautious.

Other private landlord services

Advertising is just part of the process of getting tenants on board. If you would like support with other aspects of renting, we can provide a comprehensive range of low-cost online services. For more information on the services we can provide, from customisable tenancy agreements to rent collection, online rental valuation and tenant referencing, click here.