Creating a Rental Property Website

by Steffi Cook | Updated: Dec 5, 2019

It’s crucial to have a web presence for renting out your property, and having your own website should be part of that strategy. But what do you do and what do you put on a rental property website? Read on for some tips to help you get started.

Why you should have your own website

If all you have are single-family homes that are separated from each other, a website for each particular property may not be that useful. If you own a multi-unit home or multiple homes near each other that form a community, a website becomes much more useful. It’s especially useful if you have a vacation rental with the much higher turnover and necessary marketing that comes with it.

Look for services that offer hosting/templates/domain names

Of course, this doesn’t come cheap. Running any website comes with costs, but luckily this is a common type of site with many templates and hosting options already out on the web. General hosting solutions like WordPress will do the job well, with most having templates for rental properties already. You’ll also want to get a domain name so you have a simple [something].com to point people to. Most hosting providers will be happy to sell you a domain name along with the website.

Make sure that you’re paying to host your site and not using a free service. Free services tend to put ads on the page or other tactics to make money. It’s best to just pay for your site and make sure the only thing that appears on it is what you put there.

Get someone who’s experienced with making websites

If you’re not confident about putting together a website, hire a professional. There’s no shortage of web designers who can create and maintain a great website. Don’t try to cut costs, either. This is your page about your property that you’re using to build your reputation. You want it to be the best that it can be. How well it’s put together reflects on you. There are also a lot of bad rental property websites out there on the Internet, so having a good one immediately puts you ahead of the pack.

Look at it from residents’ perspective

The main goal of your rental property website is pleasing prospective residents and appealing to current ones. All content should either help fill vacancies or help current residents with any issues. Any website that doesn’t accomplish either of these tasks shouldn't be live.

Give locally useful information

Where’s the nearest grocery store? Who’s a good auto mechanic nearby? What are some restaurants that locals love? This kind of information is highly valuable to prospective tenants. It can be used as a guide for the best type of updates: useful content that can be difficult and take awhile for newcomers to figure out on their own.

Keep the site updated

You don’t need to post every day, but if the website is never updated, what’s the point of coming back to look at it? Add updates over time, from local tips and tricks to announcements about things in the community. There’s no hard and fast rule of how often to update. In general, people will probably lose interest if your rental property website is updated less than once a month.

Use keywords your tenant will search for

You want your website to show up within prospective renters' Google searches. To help make this happen, make sure to use keywords throughout your website copy that prospective residents are likely to use in their digital rental home searches.  It's crucial you understand what prospective renters could type into search engines when looking for a new rental home and how these search terms are relevant to your property. 

Pages to include

Make sure that you have these pages on your website or linked to it:

  • Home page with the most important information displayed prominently
  • Link to your online payment and maintenance request portal on your site (if you don’t have a way to collect online payments, we can help you for free)
  • FAQs page, answering questions about the community, properties and local information
  • Gallery with pictures and video of the community
  • A contact page for inquiries about renting

Setting up a rental property website is a lot of work upfront, but it pays off over the long term. It's crucial for all of your marketing campaigns since most renters search for their new rental homes online.

Categories: Landlords

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