Facebook Massively Increases Number of Listings for Apartment Rentals

Facebook adds hundreds of thousands of new listings for apartment hunters

By Trevor Mogg November 9, 2017

facebook marketplace apartment rental 38983239 young couple showing key from new — Pressmaster/123RF

It’s been about a year since Facebook launched Marketplace, and since then it’s been building out the buying-and-selling feature to ensure you spend even more time on the site.

From this week it’s showing major love to apartment listings in the United States, adding “hundreds of thousands” of them to Marketplace to give you another option alongside Craigslist and others when it comes to making that move.

The gargantuan social network already lets you post apartment ads, but now it’s partnering with the likes of Apartment List and Zumper, increasing the number of available properties massively.

The latest addition to Marketplace comes with custom filters for things like location, price, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, rental type, pet friendliness, and more. You can also check out 360-degree images of the premises if the landlord chooses to add them.

If a property in Marketplace does take your fancy, tap on it for more information. Still interested? Then hit the appropriate icon to place a call to the landlord, request a tour, or save for later.

Facebook’s Bowen Pan said Marketplace is already “a popular place for people to look for a home to rent,” adding that the new partnerships mean “people can search even more options in the U.S. to find a place to call home. First with vehicles and now with housing rentals, we’re partnering with businesses to bring more ease and convenience for consumers.”

That’s right, the company is also in the process of boosting its automobile section within Marketplace in a similar move that saw it partner with Edmunds, Cars.com, Auction123, CDK Global, and SocialDealer, bringing a lot more listings for people to peruse.

Just like the new apartment listings, the revamped motor section offers filters for vehicle year, make, model, mileage, vehicle type, and transmission.

Even prior to Marketplace’s launch in 2016, more than 450 million people visited buy and sell groups on Facebook, according to the company’s director of product management, Mary Ku.

With Marketplace streamlining the process, and Facebook making ongoing efforts to expand the listings, the social network is hoping to get users to extend their time on the site, which should result in more ad interaction. Facebook’s most recent earnings report, released on November 1, saw its third-quarter ad sales rise 49 percent year-on-year to $10.1 billion. Facebook said it’s now working with more than 6 million advertisers.

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