Zillow or Avail for Listing Your Rental?
Let me be clear and provide this disclaimer up front: I do not like Zillow. Their Zestimates have screwed up things for a lot of people, and they take forever to update their listings. For instance, I once sold a home in February and people were still seeing it available on Zillow in April. So, Not a big fan. That being said, business is business so here we go.
Originally, we were going to list only through Avail since they will do all of the rental websites, including the Zillow network, but then we learned that we had to pay extra to list on the Zillow websites. Meanwhile, listing through Zillow was free since it was our first rental listing. A pretty obvious choice if you ask me.
In the end, our property was listed for 19 days on Avail (this allowed us to hit all the websites outside of Zillow’s network) and 13 days on Zillow (there were some issues that Zillow had to iron out before we could list the home). Through Zillow, we got five total leads, with one of them moving into the rental. Through Avail we got zero.
We still ended up using Avail to manage the rental since they can pay rent, make maintenance requests, and we can track expenses there. The only real issue I had with Zillow was that I was unable to make it work in regards to them paying the initial rent and security deposit. Tried multiple times but the tenants weren’t able to make it work.
So in the end, we listed through both Zillow and Avail, did the lease through Zillow since we live in Florida and have that option, and then the deposits, rental payments, and maintenance through Avail. In my opinion, the Avail system seems to be best set up for managing your rental after it is rented, however, when it comes to listing a rental home, Zillow is king. For now.
Have you ever listed a rental with either Avail or Zillow? How was it?
Feature Photo by Aakash Mally on Unsplash