Facebook plans to significantly expand its rental real estate listings section in its Marketplace as it attempts to better compete against Craigslist, eBay, and other e-commerce platforms.
Currently, Facebook allows individual homeowners to list their homes for sale on the Marketplace. But Facebook now seeks to beef up its rental offerings. It has developed partnerships with Apartment List and Zumper to serve up hundreds of thousands of rental listings that will be searchable to users while on Facebook’s Marketplace.
Facebook says it’s revamping Marketplace with new features. The initial rollout includes custom filters to search by, including location, price, bedrooms, bathrooms, rental type, square footage, and whether the unit is pet-friendly. It’ll also allow the ability to upload 360-degree photos for individual rental listings.
Users who find an apartment they’re interested in can fill out a contact form within Marketplace, and the property manager or real estate agent will then contact them directly.
Facebook said the changes to the housing rental section are being “driven by how people are searching and using the service.”
Facebook will not be participating directly in any transaction. It only will be connecting the listing owner and renter, Facebook said.
Facebook will also not be charging to list inventory on Marketplace. However, it does say there could be fees for using a third-party listing partner.
The feature is “gradually rolling out,” according to Facebook. It currently will only be available in the U.S.
Learn more.
“Marketplace will continue to explore a variety of new opportunities to partner with businesses, in addition to optimizing the consumer-to-consumer product experience,” the company posted on its site last week.
Facebook boasts 2.07 billion monthly active users.
Source: “Facebook Launches Massive Push Into Real Estate Listings,” HousingWire (Nov. 13, 2017)
