Software for Marketing Vacant Units: 6-Step Pick (2026)

The short answer: pick the tool for the stage where your vacancies stall

Software for marketing vacant units is any system that publishes a rental listing, captures and answers inquiries, books showings, and reports on progress until a lease is signed. The category splits into two decisions that buyers often blur. The first is reach: which sites will show your listing. The second is speed: how fast a lead gets an answer, a showing slot and a follow-up. Listing portals mostly sell the first, while showing and leasing-automation tools mostly sell the second.

TL;DR: if your listings already get traffic but leads go cold, choose a showing and follow-up tool such as ShowMojo or Tenant Turner. If traffic is the problem, a portal such as Apartments.com or Zumper buys reach, and Zillow Rental Manager is the low-cost baseline. If after-hours calls and texts are where you lose people, RentEngine's AI agent is the one built around that gap. Most 20-to-2,000-unit operators end up combining one portal with one showing tool, which is why the last third of this guide covers the layer that keeps them in sync.

Vacancy pressure is real but uneven. US rental vacancy rate, Q2 2026: 7.3% according to FRED (2026), against 7.0% in the same quarter of 2025. That national figure says little about your submarket, so use it only as a reminder that renters currently have choices and a slow reply costs you the lead.

Key Takeaways

• Showing and follow-up tools (ShowMojo, Tenant Turner, RentEngine) shorten the gap between inquiry and tour, while portals (Apartments.com, Zumper, Zillow) widen the audience. Buy for the stage that is actually stalling.

• ShowMojo and Tenant Turner publish unit-based and listing-based prices. Apartments.com sets Premium pricing on an in-account screen, Zumper's multifamily advertising is quote-based, and Zillow's portfolio pricing is not something you can model from a public sheet.

• Self-showing hardware is a second cost line. Both ShowMojo and Tenant Turner list lockbox and smart lock prices separately from the subscription, so budget devices before you compare plan rates.

• Check your property management system before you check features. A tool that cannot read your vacancy list will create double entry on day one.

• Gluing tools together with Zapier, Make or n8n works, but you own retries, duplicate prevention and monitoring. An orchestration layer above the tools is worth considering only when you run several channels at once.

Who this is for

This guide is written for property managers and landlords running roughly 20 to 2,000 units who are choosing a vacancy-marketing stack now and want a defensible shortlist. It assumes you already have a property management system and a source of unit data, and that you want fewer unanswered inquiries and fewer empty days between move-out and move-in.

• A regional manager with 200 to 800 units who loses leads after business hours and wants showings booked without staff.

• An owner-operator with 20 to 60 units who wants free or cheap reach and can answer leads personally.

• A third-party manager reporting to owners who needs showing and lead reports per property.

Red flags: you have no way to export or read unit availability from your property management system; nobody on staff will own the daily check of leads and showings; your leases require staff-led showings that no self-guided tool can replace.

How we evaluated these tools

This is an informed buyer's guide built from public vendor pages, help centers and independent sources opened on the research date. Nothing here was hands-on tested, and the weights below describe how a vacancy-focused buyer might prioritize, not a scored leaderboard. Where a vendor does not publish a fact, the guide says so rather than guessing.

Separate from the weights, two disqualifier tests apply to every vendor: can it read or receive your unit data, and does it publish enough pricing to budget a full year. Failing either is a reason to pause, not a reason to rank a vendor lower on a made-up score.

Feature matrix: what each tool covers

The matrix reflects what each vendor's own pages state. "Not stated" means the pages we opened did not say, which is a question for the vendor and not a claim that the feature is missing.

One reading of the matrix is that the first three vendors compete on speed and the last three on reach. That is analysis, not vendor data, but it matches how each describes itself.

Pricing and total cost

Pricing checked October 8, 2026. Only prices read on a vendor's own pricing page are printed. Everything else shows as Quote-based or as the way the vendor says price is set.

Both ShowMojo and Tenant Turner list unit tiers of 50, 250, 500 and 1000+, and listing tiers of 2, 10, 30 and 50+. Annual-plan starting rate at ShowMojo: $1.30 per unit according to ShowMojo (2026), and Ultra listing price at Tenant Turner: $98.50 per listing according to Tenant Turner (2026). Both pages show the annual-plan figures even though a monthly toggle is present, and neither says whether the per-unit rate is charged each month or once a year, so ask for the billing period in writing before you budget.

Hardware is the line buyers forget. Each pricing page lists MojoBox digital lockboxes from $64 and MojoLock smart locks from $85, plus a monthly fee of $3.50 per vendor device and $5.00 per third-party device. Tenant Turner's pricing page lists the same MojoBox and MojoLock devices at the same prices under its own "Tenant Turner Access Devices" heading, and its site also promotes Seros smart access, so ask each vendor which devices it supports and services before you commit to a multi-year plan on either.

RentEngine's listing and onboarding fees did not load on the research date, so the table shows Quote-based; request a written quote covering onboarding, any monthly minimum and lockbox usage. Its AI page does publish the voice rate: Voice leasing rate at RentEngine: $0.30 per minute according to RentEngine (2026).

For Apartments.com, the help center says price depends on property type and is shown when you open the upgrade screen. Apartments.com upgrade term: 30 days per purchase according to Apartments.com (2026). Because the term is 30 days, a unit that sits vacant for 75 days may need three purchases, so model the cost per vacant day and not per listing.

Vendor profiles

ShowMojo

Best fit: mid-size and larger managers who want listing syndication, showing scheduling, self-guided tours, screening and owner reporting in one platform. ShowMojo's site lists integrations with Rent Manager, Yardi, Buildium, rentvine, Entrata and AppFolio, which is the widest named PMS list among the showing tools here. Its Pro plan includes automated tour scheduling, access control, listing syndication, leasing analytics and owner reports, and tenant screening, according to its pricing page.

Limitations: the Ultra plan adds the live answering service, call routing and on-market tracking numbers, so after-hours human coverage is a paid step up. Hardware is separate. The site markets conversion lifts, but those are vendor claims and you should ask for reference customers with a similar unit count before relying on them.

Implementation: connect your PMS integration, load listings, set showing windows and access devices, then train staff on the exception queue. Plan for hardware shipping time if you want self-guided tours on day one.

Tenant Turner

Best fit: managers who want pre-qualification before a prospect can book. Its site describes customizable pre-qualification criteria, waitlists for units not yet ready, 24/7 self-scheduling, reminders and automatic cancellation of unconfirmed appointments, and post-showing feedback with application links. Annual-plan starting rate at Tenant Turner: $1.17 per unit according to Tenant Turner (2026), which is below ShowMojo's published entry rate, with Pro listing prices of $42.50 against $50.00.

Limitations: the Pro plan list on its pricing page does not include tenant screening, while ShowMojo's does. Live answering is on the Ultra plan only. Named PMS integrations are narrower than ShowMojo's list, though the site says it works with any property management software and offers Zapier.

Implementation: it imports listings from your PMS, so the setup work is mapping unit fields, setting pre-qualification rules, and choosing lockbox hardware. Have an owner sign off on the pre-qualification rules, since overly strict criteria will hide good leads from your calendar.

RentEngine

Best fit: operators whose leads arrive by text and phone at night and weekends. RentEngine's AI page says the agent handles calls, texts and follow-ups in one place, answers questions, qualifies leads, books showings, and can confirm, reschedule and cancel tours. The page claims 58% of renter leads come in after hours, which is a vendor statement and not independent research, and it states that texting is included.

Limitations: the AI page does not name any property management system integrations, and listing and onboarding fees were not retrievable on the research date. Both are first-call questions. Voice minutes meter at $0.30 each, so high call volume has a variable cost that a flat plan would not.

Implementation: expect to define what the AI may answer on its own (pricing, pet policy, availability), set handoff rules for edge cases, and test calls before going live. The human review point is the handoff queue, which someone must watch daily.

Zillow Rental Manager

Best fit: owner-operators and small managers who want a baseline listing on the largest rental audience at little or no cost. Per Avail's August 2026 comparison, Zillow Rental Manager syndicates only to Zillow, Trulia and HotPads, while Avail's own free listings reach 19 sites. That comparison comes from a competitor, so read it as a description of scope and not an endorsement.

Limitations: no showing scheduler, pre-qualification or owner reporting is described on the pages we could open. Zillow's portfolio-level terms and premium upgrade pricing are not something you can model from a public sheet, and third-party sources disagree on the premium figure, so treat any number you read elsewhere as unconfirmed and check the in-account screen.

Implementation: minimal for a handful of units. For bulk portfolios, ask Zillow whether your PMS feed is supported, since feed access can be a separate commercial conversation.

Apartments.com

Best fit: managers with larger buildings who need paid reach and can budget advertising per property. The help center says Premium offers up to 9x more search impressions and renter views, up to 3x more high-quality leads, visibility on six websites in its network, a larger ad and up to six videos. Those are "up to" vendor claims. Separate headings in the article cover properties under 5 units and 5 to 49 units.

Limitations: pricing is revealed only at the upgrade screen, and the multiple-units help article does not state a unit limit or describe bulk upload. A competitor's guide, Showdigs, says portfolios of 1 to 4 units can list free while 5 or more units need a paid package priced through sales; verify this with Apartments.com before planning around it.

Implementation: add a property, choose multiple units, enter rent, photos and amenities, then consult the ILS integrations section if you want a feed from your PMS.

Zumper

Best fit: managers who want advertising with creative services bundled in. Its advertising page splits offerings by portfolio size, with options for 1 to 9 units, 10 to 50 units and 50+ units, and lists ILS ads and rich media, Google search optimization, social media posting, reputation management and lead nurturing.

Limitations: no prices appear on that page, so Zumper is Quote-based in the table. Another competitor guide, Showdigs, says free basic posting has regional listing caps and premium monthly plans are priced by market, which is another reason to ask for a quote in your own market.

Implementation: a sales-led onboarding, so expect to agree on an advertising budget, creative assets and lead routing before the first listing goes live.

A worked example: what three fewer vacant days could be worth

Take an illustrative 250-unit portfolio with 120 turnovers a year and an average rent of $1,800 a month, or $60 a day ($1,800 ÷ 30). If a showing tool trims an average of 3 vacant days per turn through faster replies and self-guided tours, the recovered rent is 120 turns × 3 days × $60 = $21,600 a year. On the cost side, ShowMojo's Pro annual plan starts at $1.30 per unit, but its page does not say whether that is charged per month or per year, so 250 units cost 250 × $1.30 = $325 a year on one reading and $325 × 12 = $3,900 a year on the other. Add 20 MojoBox lockboxes at $64 each ($1,280) and the monthly device fee of 20 × $3.50 × 12 = $840, and year one costs between $2,445 and $6,020, a net gain of $15,580 to $19,155 if the 3-day assumption holds. When a prospect books, your CRM should stamp the lead so the sales view stays honest, for example by updating the contact property hs_lead_status, one of the HubSpot-defined properties that appear in HubSpot's contacts API reference, so reports can separate booked from unresponsive leads. Every input here is an assumption you should replace with your own turnover and rent figures.

Which reading is right decides whether the subscription is a small share of year one or most of it, so settle the billing period with each vendor first. After that, the levers that move the result are the vacant days you actually remove and the device count, which is why the next section deals with consistency across tools and not feature checklists.

Where an orchestration layer fits above these tools

Most managers who buy two or three of the products above discover the same gap: each tool is good at its own step, and nobody owns the handoff between them. A proposed, configurable workflow from US Tech Automations would start from a trigger such as your property management system marking a unit vacant-ready. The workflow would check that rent, available date and photos exist, create or update the listing in the showing tool you chose, and post a task to a leasing manager who approves the rent and copy before anything publishes. The output is a single vacancy list that shows each unit's days vacant, listing status and booked showings. Prerequisites are API or scheduled-export access from your PMS and an API, webhook or Zapier connection to each listing and showing tool. The human review point is the pre-publish approval.

A second proposed workflow handles stalled units. The trigger is a unit passing a configured number of vacant days with fewer than a set number of booked showings. The action pulls lead and showing exports from each channel, compares them, and drafts a suggested change, such as new photos or a rent adjustment, as an approval task for the property manager. The output is a short recommendation with the underlying lead counts, and nothing goes to an owner or changes a listing until a named person approves it. This depends on being able to export lead and showing data from each tool, and it is a proposal to scope, not a deployment with measured results. If you also run lead pipelines in a CRM, the comparison in best lead management software covers that side, and the marketing automation roundup for property management shows where this kind of layer sits among other tools.

The honest alternative is to build this yourself in Zapier, Make or n8n, or in-house. Those tools can keep run histories, retry failed steps, branch on errors and produce audit evidence when configured well. The tradeoff is ownership: you design and maintain observability, idempotency so one move-out does not create two listings, escalation when a step fails, access controls for the credentials, and ongoing maintenance when a vendor changes an endpoint. A proposed US Tech Automations design could configure some of that differently, for example by keying every listing action to a unit-and-vacancy-cycle identifier, running a daily reconciliation between your PMS vacancy list and what is live on each portal, and routing failures to a named human with the failing record attached. It still requires PMS API access and a person who reviews the exception queue, and a team with a strong in-house automation owner may do all of this at lower cost.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations: if you manage a small number of units in one tool that already publishes, answers and schedules, an extra orchestration layer adds cost without removing a handoff. If your PMS already offers built-in listings and showing scheduling that your team uses daily, start there; the comparison of Rent Manager and AppFolio is a good way to check what your system already covers. And if you cannot get API or export access to your vacancy data, no workflow can run reliably, so fix access first.

Six-step decision checklist

1. Write down where your last ten vacancies stalled: no traffic, slow reply, no showing slot, or a stuck application. The answer points to portal, speed tool, or process fix.

2. Confirm what your PMS can export or integrate with, and eliminate any vendor that cannot read your unit list.

3. Decide whether you want self-guided tours. If yes, price devices and monthly device fees before comparing plan rates.

4. Ask each shortlisted vendor for a written quote that includes onboarding, minimums, add-ons and the billing term, and compare per vacant day.

5. Name the person who reviews leads, showings and handoffs daily, and the backup when they are out.

6. Pilot on a defined set of units for one turn cycle and compare days vacant against your own baseline before expanding.

Mistakes that keep units empty longer

• Buying reach when the real problem is response time. More inquiries into a slow process only means more cold leads.

• Comparing plan prices and ignoring hardware, add-on and voice-minute costs, which can matter as much as the subscription.

• Treating vendor conversion claims as benchmarks. Claims on vendor pages are marketing until you see a customer with a similar portfolio.

• Letting pre-qualification rules grow so strict that qualified renters never reach the calendar.

• Duplicating listing edits across portals by hand, which leaves stale rent or availability dates live somewhere.

• Skipping the daily review of the exception queue, where failed handoffs and unanswered leads collect.

FAQ

What is the best software for marketing vacant units?

The best choice depends on the stage where your vacancies stall: ShowMojo or Tenant Turner for showings and follow-up, RentEngine for AI-handled calls and texts, and a portal such as Apartments.com, Zumper or Zillow for audience reach. Most mid-size managers use one portal and one showing tool together, and this guide's profiles state each vendor's fit and limits.

How much does vacant-unit marketing software cost?

For the two vendors that publish prices, annual plans start at $1.30 per unit at ShowMojo and $1.17 per unit at Tenant Turner, though neither page says whether that rate is charged monthly or yearly, and hardware and live-answering upgrades are extra. Apartments.com, Zumper and RentEngine's listing fees are set through the upgrade screen or a quote, so request them in writing.

Is Zillow Rental Manager enough for a portfolio?

For a handful of units it is a reasonable baseline, but it is not a showing or follow-up system. According to Avail's comparison it syndicates only to Zillow, Trulia and HotPads, so most portfolios pair it with a scheduling tool.

Do I need self-showing lockboxes?

No, but they remove staff time from tours and are priced separately, from $64 for a MojoBox and from $85 for a MojoLock on the vendors' pricing pages, plus monthly device fees. If your leases or insurance require staff-led showings, skip the hardware and use scheduling alone.

Can Zapier, Make or n8n replace a vacancy-marketing tool?

They can connect the tools and can support run histories, retries and error branches, but they do not list properties or answer leads themselves, and you own the design, monitoring and maintenance. Use them for glue between tools you already pay for, not as a substitute for a listing or showing product.

How do I measure whether the software is working?

Measure days vacant per turn against your own baseline over one full turn cycle, along with the share of inquiries that get a reply and a booked showing. Vendor-claimed lifts are not a substitute for your own numbers.

Conclusion

Start with the stage where your vacancies stall, confirm that the shortlisted tool can read your unit data, and price hardware and add-ons alongside the subscription. If you end up running more than one channel and want the handoffs between them scoped, see how US Tech Automations configures this against your PMS and showing tools. To keep tenants in place and shrink the number of turns you market at all, the guide to renewal reminder software is a useful next read.