When I first thought about marketing a property for rent on Facebook Marketplace I recalled my experiences with selling items on Facebook Marketplace - all of which were BAD. So I started this article with why I would not use Facebook Marketplace to find tenants.
The Bad
1. The first thing is that my For Rent listing would put my Personal Profile Privacy is at risk, unless you create a fake profile for your rental listings. I tried to use my business page to create the listing, but Facebook did not give me this option while creating a listing on their Marketplace platform.
2. Tenants will try to avoid agents here, more so then private listings on Trademe. The team at Good Neighbours and other good property managers include a background check on tenant applications which include looking into files with the Court System, Police Records, Debt and Credit, Previous Addresses, News Papers and the Internet. If there is something a tenant is wanting to hide, then they would want to avoid these checks and apply directly to private landlords who do not have the resources.
3. Open to scammers like the Prince from Nigeria with 1 million to transfer onto your credit card. How many scammy messages have you received via Facebook Messenger? A lot more then Gmail. Although your contact information is available on Trademe for prespective tenants to make contact. I feel Facebook has a more personal or social setting and invites spam and scammers to make contact.
The Good
1. It’s free! Need I say more? With Trademe fees increasing, and other platforms like One Roof and Real Estate.co.nz charging high fees. Facebook Markletplace would be my go to platform if I was wanting to save precious dollars, and cross my fingers that I get a reasonable applicant.
2. It is growing in popularity. Facebook said about 25% or 800 million of their users use Facebook Market Place. It is putting a dent in all rental listing platforms across the globe. As a property manager, I would use Facebook Marketplace if my leads had dried up on other platforms.
The Not So Ugly
In my opinion, the cons outweigh the pros in terms of high value leads coming in from Facebook Marketplace for sure, 100% hands down. I will need to be completely bonkers if it was my main listing platform.
However, because of its popularity I am seriously thinking about having all my listings on Facebook Marketplace not only for tenant enquires. But also from a business marketing perspective, as it is a free way to get people familiar with my business.
Thank you for reading my blog this far. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic in the comments below.