Facebook marketplace is adding property rentals to its ecommerce offering so that renters can find their new place to live. They’ll be pulling in listings from rental sites Apartment List and Zumper to augment existing ads for property to rent.
Facebook‘s Bowen Pan said: “Marketplace is a popular place for people to look for a home to rent. Now that we’re adding listings from Apartment List and Zumper, 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.”
The changes will be visible by US Facebook users only but are a good indication of what they’re thinking globally and we may we’ll see something similar in Europe soon.
Facebook Continues to develop the Marketplace section of the social network and bolstering selection by drawing in ads from other services. It’s already done something similar for second hand cars and the move to promote rentals will apparently bring in hundreds of thousands of options.
Users will be able to harness custom filters for various features like location, price, number of bedrooms and bathrooms. Also searchers can specify the type of rental they want, whether they can keep pets and also search by size of property.
People letting property will be able to upload 360-degree photos to their listings which will let potential renters see rental homes more completely.
Getting involved more fully in property listings is an obvious step for the Facebook marketplace. It’s ripe for further disruption and potentially very lucrative. But additionally Facebooks hyper-local networks mean that they’re in a good position to connect people. And being able to verify someone’s identity as a Facebook user could also become part of the tenant referencing system.
