Rental Listing Websites Features That Fill Vacancies
Three surfaces do the work. The rest is table stakes, and it is all here too.
Most rental listing websites are a form and a search box. RentPlace adds the two things that actually decide how fast a unit fills: listing quality and inquiry quality.
The three surfaces, in order.
Every listing graded before it goes live
The score is about facts rather than style. A listing missing rent, availability or the pet policy cannot score well, because those omissions are exactly what generate the repeat questions.
- A score out of 100 and a plain one-line verdict
- Present or missing on 11 must-have facts
- A rewritten headline and description in renter search language
- Bracketed placeholders where a fact is missing, never invented numbers
- The four questions the listing keeps provoking
30/100
Listing score
This listing leaves out rent, availability and the pet policy, which is most of the inbox noise it is going to get.
Must-have facts
1/11 stated
- Bedrooms and bathrooms States two bedrooms
- Monthly rent Add the exact monthly rent
- Availability date Add the date it is free
- Security deposit State the deposit amount
- Pet policy Say which pets, and any fee
- Laundry In unit, on site or none
Tenant screening software built into the listing
A renter cannot send a bare "is this still available?" through RentPlace. They answer your questions first, and the answers travel with the message as structured fields.
- Move-in date, income band, occupants, pets and lease length as standard
- Add your own questions per listing or per portfolio
- Save question sets as templates and reuse them
- The same questionnaire for every applicant on a listing
- Answers stored as fields, so applicants compare side by side
RentPlace collects answers. It does not run a consumer report, a credit check or a criminal background check, and nothing here is legal advice. See how to do a background check on a tenant.
- Desired move-in
- March 1
- Income band
- $72,000 to $90,000
- Occupants
- 2 adults
- Pets
- One cat, indoor
- Lease length
- 12 months
- Employment
- Salaried, 3 years
Message
"We are moving from across town and can view any evening this week. Happy to provide references from our current landlord."
One screen, sorted by what costs you money
Days vacant is the emphasised column because nothing else on the page is actively billing you. A unit at $1,800 loses about $60 a day, so the column is a running total, not a status.
- Days vacant and inquiry count on every unit
- Live and leased status, with the lease date recorded
- Time-to-lease trend across the portfolio
- Filters for type, beds, rent and availability window
- Owner grouping on the Manager plan and above
| Unit | Rent | Days vacant | Inquiries |
|---|---|---|---|
| 214 Ellery St Apt 3, 2 bd / 1 ba | $1,850 |
6
|
11 |
| 88 Rowan Ave 3 bd / 2 ba | $2,400 |
2
|
4 |
| 39 Halden Row Unit B, Studio | $1,050 |
14
|
19 |
| 214 Ellery St Apt 1, 1 bd / 1 ba | $1,375 |
-
|
- |
The rest of the rental listing website
The parts you would expect from a listing site, built so they do not quietly work against you later. The right column is the lowest plan that carries each one.
- Indexable listing pages
- Every listing gets a real, crawlable page with proper markup, so renters can find it from a search engine rather than only from inside our site.
- Every plan
- Renter search and filters
- Renters filter on the facts your listing is required to state: type, beds, rent, availability, pets, parking, laundry. Free for renters, always.
- Every plan
- Photo handling
- Upload once, we resize and order them. The cover photo is the one renters judge in half a second, so the grader flags a listing that has none.
- Portfolio and above
- Data export
- Your listings and inquiries leave in CSV whenever you want them, without asking us first.
- Every plan
- Saved screening templates
- Build a question set once, apply it to the whole portfolio instead of retyping it per listing.
- Portfolio and above
- Applicant compare view
- Every applicant on a listing side by side on the fields you asked for.
- Portfolio and above
- Custom-branded listing pages
- Your name and colors on the public listing page.
- Portfolio and above
- Syndication feed
- A structured feed of your live listings for the channels you already use.
- Portfolio and above
- Bulk CSV import
- Move an existing portfolio in without retyping it.
- Manager and above
- REST API
- Push listings from your own system and pull inquiries back into it.
- Manager and above
- Owner reporting export
- Time-to-lease and vacancy grouped by owner, exported into the report you already send.
- Manager and above
- SSO, SAML and SCIM
- Your identity provider, your offboarding process, seats provisioned from your directory.
- Enterprise
Compare the whole thing against the alternatives in the apartments for rent websites guide, or see which plan carries which feature on pricing.