With your experiences, what would be good websites that many qualified tenants would look for a new place for their next move?

I only use craigslist. but, so far, I may get one qualified potential tenant out of 10 responses. It has photos and detail descriptions of the dwellings.

But, when I ask these simple pre-screen questions, they don't reply, I wonder what are the steps that to get a decent tenant/family, when I offer a very nice "palace".

when is your moving date?

how many people will move in with you?

do you have pets, what kind?

require monthly gross income 3X, non smoke and no inviction.

Any suggestions, so I can improve my selections.

I have used craigslist with good success. Granted, you will get a lot of inquires.

I don't ask to many questions. I tell them to go to the rental and look at the outside, look in the windows (curtains are back so they can see), wander the yard, scope out the area. We are several miles from town, in the country. Lots of trees and wildlife. That scares some people.

I tell them if they are still interested that I will mail them an app. or they can pick one up. If mailed I put in a note that I want to meet them, in person when the app. is returned. I have it in my add that there is a nonrefundable fee of $25.00 per person, up front. Just the fee weeds out about 80%.

The serious people will come pick up an app. and be interested in meeting us. We talk, we have coffee, etc. We answer any questions they have. I tell them to feel free to ask.

Because of craigslist I am never home alone first time at a meeting. To dangerous.

Is Craigslist better at dealing with scammers then they have been in the past?.

I stopped using it when so many ads got stolen. Even those where the pictures were watermarked. It got so bad I used to have to post signs on the front doors of my available rentals explaining I was the owner and to avoid the ads that listed the place for $200 lower.

I'd report the stolen ads to craigslist; it would take several days (or longer) for the ads to be addressed only to have them reappear again shortly afterwards.

I do like Zumper although ads there show up on FB Marketplace...and FB has plenty of stolen ads. But they respond very quickly (at least in my area) when these are reported.

Zillow gives me the most responses but costs $10 a week

Zumper is OK but like someone said it cross posts to facebook and I get a lot of looky lous that waste time. Next time I will try without Zumper.

Apartments gives a few leads. Free and easy to do

I don't do craigs list because it is where the scammers are

I haven't had much luck with facebook. Lots of "Is it available" questions.

My suggestion is to watermark your photos with your phone # and company name to lessen the chance someone takes your pics and puts them on craigs list as part of a scam.

Star watermark is free

Respond to all inquiries with "Please go to the website to schedule an appointment" If you have a web site you can have a tab with your pre-qual questions. Or if no web site you can have a google forms doc with your questions.

It self selects out the lazy ones and the ones who can't follow directions.

Since my online ad had pictures of the inside and outside of the unit, this is key to attracting good applicants. I ask few questions and have "More" people show up at my OPEN HOUSE.

I did an experiment. I had people show up by appointment 20 minutes apart. So most people looking didn't see any competition.

The good tenants are already situated and don't move for no reason and they are not out there shopping for a new rental. So the market is basically made up of applicants that no one will take, who are desperately answering any ad they can find, hoping to trick someone into taking them.

There is no way that any website listing rentals is only going to go out to good tenants and that bad tenants won't know about it. The tenants have a very good grapevine and as soon as anyone has any success with anything the word goes out. If there is a new website listing places for rent, they all hear about it.

If a website gets a reputation for scams, then the good tenants are less likely to shop there. Or at least, they are going to be very careful.

Zumper is my #1 go to. Free, easy to use, and as others have mentioned is syndicates to FB Marketplace, which is the major hot spot online now for rentals in the category that I provide (Class C---safe, functional, clean but nothing fancy).

Zillow works, but a lot of times I see the same leads coming in there as from Zumper so there's a lot of repeat traffic among the two sites. $9.99 per listing per week isn't very expensive, but why pay to get repeats? I've not noticed any difference in the quality of the leads between the two sites.

I no longer use Zillow as they are charging here (and yes, I do understand that $9.99 per week isn't "bad" but as Sid stated ... the other ones usually duplicate so what am I paying for?). The other point is that I'm not so sure anyone even goes to Zillow for rentals as whenever I do go out to Zillow there is rarely anything listed and if there is, it's only the big apartment complexes.

I use these (and I'm starting to like TurboTenant more because they immediately send out a questionnaire to the prospective about pets, number of people, income (and from where), etc. So if I end up getting a lot of inquiries (which is typical) I will go to the ones that "pre-screened" and look through those first.

Zumper

TurboTenant

Cozy (.co)

Apartments

Avail (.co)

Craig's List got me a ton of inquiries, BUT they were mostly non-qualified, didn't respond past the first 'is this still available?' didn't show up for scheduled walk through and had my AD stolen a number of times and used with a much lower rental price. Had to put a note on the AD that I would NOT call them and they were NOT to send any money to anyone over the phone or with cards. A few got royally scammed.

Cozy/Apartments, has been useless. I don't think they are ready.

Zumper is sporadic

Avail just doesn't work for me.

Turbotenant has been the really shining star for me.

Craigslist is still quasi good.

Zillow has brand name, but not that great

Facebook, via turbotenant, has a lot of losers.

The most useless is tenantcloud. Overly complex for no reason, with almost no responses.

Regardless, have a google form link ready. WHOEVER shows interest, send them that link and nothing else. They don't fill it out don't bother.

Bonanza -

here you go, feed back is always welcomed.