The Digital Word-of-Mouth: Why Your Next Landlord Might Be in Your Social Media Feed
Searching for a place to live used to be a very physical, linear process. You bought the Sunday paper, circled a few classifieds in red ink, and spent the afternoon driving around looking for “For Rent” signs staked in front yards. If you were really serious, you would walk into a property management office and ask for a printed list. That era is effectively dead. While listing sites like Zillow and Apartments.com still dominate the initial search volume, there is a massive shift happening in how tenants actually find and vet their next home. The search has moved from static databases to dynamic social feeds. Today, a prospective tenant is just as likely to find their next rental house through a localized Facebook Group, an Instagram Story, or a TikTok walkthrough as they are through a traditional search engine. This isn’t just because we are addicted to our phones; it’s because social media solves the three biggest problems with the traditional rental market: trust, spee...