How to Advertise a Property on Rightmove and Zoopla as a Private Landlord

If you are letting property in the UK and need to find tenants quickly, you can do no better than to advertise your property on both Rightmove and Zoopla at the same time.

These two websites together make up the ‘major portals’: sites where millions of tenants go every day to search for houses to rent all across the UK.

But they only let agents advertise. So how do you, a private landlord who doesn’t want to pay thousands to a letting agent, advertise your property on the portals?

It’s really simple. OpenRent lets you advertise your property on Rightmove and Zoopla within a few hours.

How to Advertise on Rightmove and Zoopla Today

1. Make sure you have a valid Energy Performance Certificate (EPC)
2. Take pictures of your property
3. Upload the photos to a new OpenRent advert
4. Add a description, rent amount and move in date
5. Review and publish your advert

Once approved, we will upload your property to both Rightmove and Zoopla within a few hours. We will put the same ad up on both sites. If you want, we can even automatically generate the description for you, and use our data to optimise it to get even more enquiries from tenants.

Once it’s online, the advert will do all the work for you. Enquiries will come directly to you via your OpenRent account. We’ll even text and email you so you’ll never miss an enquiry.

How Many Tenants Will Contact Me When My Property Goes on Rightmove and Zoopla?

If you advertise in the way we described above, you will get an incredible amount of attention. On average, landlords who listed on Rightmove and Zoopla through OpenRent receive an amazing 27 enquiries and find new tenants for their property in four days.

If you have particularly good photos or a property in a high-demand area, you could see much better than average enquiries. Advertise on Rightmove and Zoopla in the way described above and you’ll get your property a huge amount of exposure to tenants.

Why Can’t I Directly Advertise on Zoopla and Rightmove?

Only letting agents can advertise on Zoopla and Rightmove. OpenRent is the UK’s largest letting agent, meaning we can let your property for you by adding it to the major portals.

We can do so much for you as a landlord (see Rent Now!), but if you just want to advertise on Zoopla and Rightmove, then OpenRent is the closest thing you can get to advertising directly on those sites.

Cost to Advertise on Rightmove and Zoopla

OpenRent is the most popular and cost effective way to advertise on Rightmove and Zoopla. We are used by more landlords than any other agent because we combine low prices with great service.

It costs just £49 to advertise on Rightmove and Zoopla. That is a super low cost to find tenants online compared to the thousands you would pay to a high street agent over the course of a tenancy. Unlike these agents, we don’t charge 10% of your rent every month. You can advertise on Rightmove and Zoopla for a one-off fee of just £49, with no ongoing or hidden fees.

We use our scale as the UK’s biggest letting agent to pass on great savings to you, the landlord. Compared to using a high street agent to advertise online, we can save you thousands. Plus, other agents might only be able to advertise on either Rightmove or Zoopla, but not both.

That’s because they also advertise on OnTheMarket, which, as a condition, prohibits agents from using both Rightmove and Zoopla. But we advertise your property on both Rightmove and Zoopla at the same time! Plus dozens of other websites.

Why Do Rightmove and Zoopla only Deal with Agents?

So why don’t Rightmove and Zoopla deal directly with private landlords? That has simply never been their business.

By having to go through verified agents, landlord’s adverts are vetted and checked by property professionals. That’s something OpenRent does for every advert.

It also ensures that all tenant enquiries are handled professionally, making Rightmove and Zoopla better to use for tenants than other listing websites which don’t have these protections. As a letting agent, OpenRent handles tenant enquiries on landlords’ behalf. We respond instantly to let tenants know their enquiry has been received

There are other reasons, too.

Only dealing with agents allows the Big Two to operate at a larger scale with lower costs. For instance, recruiting customers is expensive. You have to market to them, win them over and retain them.

By only dealing with agents, Rightmove and Zoopla have fewer customers to recruit and have fewer relationships to manage. That saves them money.

Consider:

• if the average agent lists 50 properties a month, and
• the average landlord has two properties

To advertise 100,000 properties, Rightmove only has to manage 2,000 letting agent relationships. But if all these landlords were letting directly, they would have to manage 50,000 landlord relationships!
That would mean higher costs, and less professional listings, causing friction and pain; a letting agent proficient at using the sites will cause fewer problems and post higher quality adverts than a landlord using the site only once every few years.

But this is where OpenRent comes in. We let over 9,000 properties a month by ensuring your adverts pass the portal guidelines. We’ll help you optimise your advert if you want, but we leave you in the driving seat.

How Important Is it to Be on Rightmove and Zoopla?

Incredibly important. The overwhelming majority of property searches begin online, so that’s where your property should be advertised.

Rightmove receives over 125m views every month. Zoopla receives over 50m views. If you need to find tenants quickly, being on both these portals gives you unrivaled coverage.

Many landlords still find their tenants via more traditional methods, which can often work out fantastically. Local adverts, friends of friends, and friends of the tenant are still great ways to find good tenants.

But if these options are not delivering for you, or you have several properties, or properties in an area you don’t have connections in, then using the internet’s Big Two property portals is a no-brainer. Especially when you can do it for a one-off fee of £49 via OpenRent.

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