Zillow believes that searching for a new rental should be an empowering experience, not a frustrating one. That’s why we’re committed to helping make rental costs more transparent, giving renters a clearer understanding of potential fees upfront so they can better evaluate their options before signing a lease. At the same time, we’re working with our housing provider partners to build the tools that allow them to easily share this information, creating a smoother process for everyone.
Incomplete pricing information has long been a challenge in the rental market. Nearly all renters (94%) agree that listings should clearly display all fees. Additionally, over half of renter households in the U.S. are cost-burdened, spending at least 30% of their income on rent. Unexpected fees can create financial stress, making it harder to budget for a move.
To support renters and housing providers, we’ve introduced enhancements to rental listings designed to give renters a clearer picture of their total costs, along with self-service tools that allow property managers and landlords to easily manage and present fee information.
A better way to understand rental costs
To help ensure that renters can easily assess affordability and better compare listings, we’ve made significant updates to how costs and fees are displayed across the Zillow Rentals marketplace.
What’s new for renters?
- Detailed fee breakdown: When property managers or landlords provide the information, renters can now see move-in costs, monthly recurring charges and other applicable fees directly within a listing.
- Clearly labeled fees: Required costs, such as monthly base rent, security deposit and application fees, are always displayed first, followed by optional costs, such as parking, pet rent and storage fees, for example.
- More customization options: A new costs and fees calculator allows renters to tailor their estimated total cost by selecting optional services, such as those pet, parking and storage fees.
Empowering housing providers with self-service fee management
Providing renters with accurate fee data starts with our partners — the property managers and landlords who list their rentals on Zillow. We recognize housing providers need flexibility to manage and customize their listings, which is why we launched self-service fee management tools tailored to both multifamily property managers and landlords of single-family homes.
For multifamily rental partners: Zillow Account Portal self-service fee tools
Multifamily property managers using one of Zillow’s multifamily advertising solutions can now control how fees appear on their units and properties through the Zillow Account Portal, enabling them to provide accurate and complete pricing information to renters. New features include:
- Ability to add, edit or delete fees directly in the Zillow Account Portal.
- Expanded fee categories (e.g., storage or service fees) beyond traditional costs, such as security deposits, application or administration fees and pet fees.
- Custom disclaimers to provide renters with additional details about property-specific costs.
For landlords of single-family homes: Zillow Rental Manager self-service fee tools
For landlords utilizing Zillow Rental Manager to list their properties for rent, new fee management tools are now available. Key enhancements include:
- Ability to add, edit and delete fees when creating or updating a listing.
- New customizable fee categories, including administrative, parking and utilities fees.
- Flexible pricing options: Landlords can indicate whether fees are required, optional or included in rent.
By making fee entry more flexible and transparent, we’re helping to ensure both large-property managers and independent landlords can easily communicate pricing while attracting informed, high-intent renters.
What’s next?
Zillow is committed to advancing fee transparency across the rental industry by working closely with housing providers, policymakers and technology partners to establish clear, standardized practices for rental fee disclosure.
We are collaborating with feed providers to support the scaled delivery of fee data through the multifamily rental industry’s new listing syndication standard (MITS 5.0 standard). While our Zillow Rentals Ad Manager (ZRAM) self-service fee tools provide an immediate solution for partners looking to manually update their listings today, expanding automated fee syndication capabilities will be critical in ensuring streamlined and scalable updates for multifamily rental partners over time.
We are working alongside our industry partners to help shape legislation that ensures renters have the clarity they need while also being practical for housing providers to implement. At the same time, we continue to refine our products to create a consistent and seamless experience for renters nationwide while enabling property managers and landlords to easily comply with legal requirements and consumer expectations.
As our tools roll out and industry standards continue to evolve, Zillow remains dedicated to building a more transparent, efficient and renter-friendly housing marketplace.