How to write a rental ad that attracts great tenants

Here’s the honest truth about rental ads: most landlords slap a couple of lines together, hit publish, and still lease the place. In a market this tight, a bare-bones ad usually gets there in the end.

But “gets there in the end” isn’t really the goal, is it? The goal is a strong field of quality applications, quickly, so you can choose your tenant instead of settling for whoever turned up. And that’s what separates the ads at the front of the pack from the rest: not budget, not luck, just a little deliberate effort in the right places.

This guide covers exactly where to spend that effort: what the written ad actually needs to do (and what the listing fields already do for you), headlines and descriptions that pull applications, and the advertising rules that most “write a catchy headline!” articles skip entirely.

Write for the tenant you want

A rental ad has one job: help the right tenant recognise the property as theirs, fast, and get them to apply.

That’s why specificity beats polish every time. “The living room gets sun all afternoon” speaks directly to someone who’s spent two winters in a dark apartment. “Fully fenced yard, pets considered” is exactly what the responsible dog owner has been scrolling for. Every concrete detail is a hook for the household the property genuinely suits, and those are the applications you want more of.

Specific ads also pre-answer the questions that otherwise fill your inbox, which means the enquiries you do get are from people who’ve read the ad, know the details, and are serious. More strong applications, fewer “does it have aircon?” emails. That’s the whole game.

Before you write a word: get the rent right

No headline can rescue an overpriced listing. Renters search in price bands and know their local market to the dollar. Set the rent $30 above the going rate and your ad simply doesn’t get opened, no matter how well written it is.

We’ve covered how to research and set your rental price in detail, but the short version: one empty week costs more than months of a small premium ever earns back. Price it at the market, and the rest of this guide gets much easier.

What the written ad needs to cover (the fields handle the rest)

First, a practical point that saves you repeating yourself. When you list on realestate.com.au or Domain, the rent, bond, available date, bedrooms, bathrooms and parking are all structured fields you fill in as part of the listing. They display in their own panel on the ad, so there’s no need to burn description lines restating them.

Your written ad is the headline plus the description, and its job is everything the fields can’t say:

• Inclusions and comforts: heating and cooling type, dishwasher, internet connection type, solar, storage
• Your pet position, in words: the pets field is a tick-box; “pets considered on application” in the description tells pet owners you mean it
• Outdoor space and who maintains it: a courtyard someone else mows is a different proposition from a quarter-acre that’s all yours
• Location specifics: walking distance to the station, the school catchment, the good coffee
• The property’s best features, as benefits: not “north-facing” but “morning sun in the kitchen”
• The honest quirks: a compact second bedroom, stairs, street parking only
• Lease flexibility, if you have any: open to a longer term, negotiable start date

Every one of those is something a good tenant wants to know before applying. Ask our agents what tenants still enquire about even on fully filled-in listings and the same answers come back every time: pets, inclusions, and who looks after the garden. Cover them in the description and you’ll get applications instead of questions.

The headline: specific beats spectacular

Rental headlines fail in two directions. Some say nothing (“Great location, must see!”). Others shout (“STUNNING!! IMMACULATE!! WON’T LAST!!”). Both get scrolled past, because renters have seen a thousand of each.

The formula that works is boringly reliable:

[Strongest concrete feature] + [property type] + [location benefit]

Instead of this	Write this
GREAT LOCATION! MUST SEE!	Sunny two-bedroom apartment, 400m walk to the station
Stunning family home!!	Renovated three-bedroom home in the Woodvale school catchment
Cosy unit, won’t last!	Ground-floor unit with private courtyard, pets considered
Immaculate executive residence	Air-conditioned townhouse with double garage, 10 minutes to the hospital

Notice what the right-hand column is doing: each headline gives a tenant a concrete reason to click, and each one speaks to a slightly different household. “School catchment” and “pets considered” aren’t just details, they’re signals to exactly the applicants you’re hoping to hear from.

The description: specifics, short paragraphs, no adjective soup

Once they’ve clicked, the description has one job: help the right tenant picture their life in the property. A structure that works:

Lead with your strongest card. First sentence, best feature, and make it concrete. “North-facing living room that gets sun all day” beats “beautiful light-filled home” every time. Adjectives tell; specifics sell.

Walk through the property the way a visitor would. Living areas, kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom, outdoors. Two or three short paragraphs, not a wall of text. Mention the things photos can’t show: quiet street, recently rewired, great water pressure, neighbours you’d actually miss.

Anchor the location with real landmarks. “Seven minutes’ walk to Woolworths and the 412 bus” is doing far more work than “close to amenities.”

Be honest about the quirks. If the second bedroom is small, call it a “compact second bedroom or ideal home office.” You’re not talking the property down; you’re making sure the person who inspects it isn’t disappointed. Disappointed inspectors don’t apply, and over-sold tenants leave early. The honest ad wins both ways.

What our team sees

“It’s specificity every time. The ads that get bites actually paint a picture: ‘the living room gets sun all afternoon’, ‘two minutes’ walk to the bus stop’, ‘yard’s fully fenced, pets okay’, instead of the usual ‘close to shops and transport’ filler. Vague ad, vague interest. Or none.”

Chenelle Moothedom, Senior Agent, PropertyNow

A quick word on photos

This is a guide to the written ad, so we’ll keep it brief, but the words and pictures work as a team: the photos earn the click, the words earn the application. The photo mistake our team sees most isn’t bad photos, it’s good photos in the wrong order: ads that open with the hallway or the laundry. Your first three photos decide whether anyone clicks in at all, so make them your strongest rooms in your best light.

One legal note if you’re re-letting while tenants are still in place: in Queensland you need the tenant’s written permission before advertising photos that show their belongings (the RTA has a fact sheet), Victoria has consent rules with fines attached, and everywhere else it’s simply good practice to ask first.

Should you mention it’s a private rental? (Short answer: no)

Here’s one that trips up plenty of self-managing landlords. You’re doing this yourself, you’re proud of it, and “deal direct with the owner, no agents!” feels like a selling point. Leave it out anyway, along with your personal phone number and email.

An ad flagged as a private rental is a magnet for the wrong kind of attention. Scammers actively hunt for owner-listed properties, and personal contact details hand them everything they need. You’ll occasionally hear from a disgruntled agent with opinions to share. And it can plant a needless seed of doubt in a tenant who’s already half in love with the place. There’s no upside to weigh against any of that: the portals route every enquiry to you anyway.

To be clear, this isn’t about hiding anything. Be completely upfront that you’re the owner when people enquire and when you meet them at inspections. Transparency belongs in person; the ad belongs to the property.

The rules: what you can and can’t say in a rental ad

This is the part that surprises a lot of first-time landlords: rental advertising is regulated on several fronts, and the rules have real teeth. None of it is hard to comply with once you know it’s there.

1. Advertise one fixed rent figure. No ranges, no “offers over”, no “by negotiation”. This is the law in most of the country:

State	The rule	In force since
NSW	Fixed rent required; landlords, agents and rental platforms banned from soliciting higher offers	2022, extended since
VIC	Fixed price required; from Nov 2025 you also can’t accept unsolicited higher offers	2021 reforms
QLD	Fixed price required; offering or accepting above the advertised rent is an offence	2022
WA	Fixed rent required, no inviting higher offers ($10,000 penalty)	July 2024
SA	Fixed rent required, no soliciting higher bids (fines up to $20,000)	September 2023
TAS	Fixed price required, no inviting higher offers	2015

(ACT and NT landlords: check your tenancy authority, as the rules keep tightening nationally.) And they do enforce it: Victoria issued over $600,000 in fines for it in a single year, and realestate.com.au and Domain now block rental listings without a fixed price. If a tenant offers extra unprompted, check your state’s position before saying yes (Queensland, for one, says you can’t accept it at all).

2. Be careful with “no pets”. Most states have now moved to a model where a landlord can’t flatly refuse pets: tenants apply, and you need a prescribed reason (or a tribunal order) to say no. A blunt “NO PETS” in the ad can put you at odds with your state’s rules and turns away a large slice of good applicants in the process. “Pets considered on application” is both the safer wording and the smarter one.

3. Describe the property, not your ideal tenant. “Perfect for a quiet professional couple” feels harmless to write, but under federal and state anti-discrimination law you can’t exclude people based on things like family status, age, race or disability, and wording that screens out families or older renters can cross that line. Let the property’s features speak to the tenants they suit, and let your screening process (applied evenly to everyone) do the selecting.

4. Play by the portals’ rules too. realestate.com.au has an acceptable use policy covering what listings can and can’t contain: things like links to external websites, promotional material unrelated to the property, and keeping your listing status current. Breaching it can get a listing pulled, so it’s worth a skim before you publish.

The mistakes that cost you applications

A quick rogues’ gallery, so you can skip the usual stumbles:

1. The two-line special. “Neat 3br house, close to shops. Contact for inspection.” It’ll probably lease eventually, but it will never be the ad a great tenant applies to first. Ten more minutes of effort is the cheapest upgrade in property.
2. The rent’s wrong. The ad never stood a chance. Price first, prose second.
3. Adjective soup and filler. “Stunning, immaculate, delightful” and “close to shops and transport” tell a tenant nothing. One concrete detail outworks five adjectives.
4. Hostile wording. “No tyre kickers”, “STRICTLY no exceptions”, a wall of capital-letter rules. It reads as “difficult landlord” and scares off exactly the careful applicants you want. State your terms once, plainly, and save the vetting for the application stage.
5. Typos and messy punctuation. Spelling errors and stray capitals quietly erode a tenant’s trust: if the ad’s sloppy, what’s the maintenance like? This one’s free to fix (see below).
6. Set and forget. If the ad’s had a fortnight with no decent applications, don’t guess at the fix. Look at the shape of your enquiries first. Plenty of enquiries but nobody applying? The ad’s doing its job; it’s the price (or the property up close) putting people off. Barely any enquiries at all? The ad itself isn’t landing, so start with the photos, the headline and where it’s listed.

Before you publish: read it aloud

The single cheapest quality check there is. Read your ad out loud, start to finish. Your ear will catch what your eye skims past: the sentence that doesn’t flow, the word you typed twice, the “it’s” that should be “its”. If you stumble reading it, a tenant stumbles too. Two minutes, and your ad instantly reads better than most of the listings it’s sitting next to.

What happens after the ad goes live

A well-written ad on the right platforms moves quickly. Across PropertyNow, landlords who listed with us leased their properties in a median of 16 days, and here’s what drives that timeline if you want to benchmark your own.

To get your ad in front of tenants, it needs to be on the major portals, where nearly all tenant searches happen. Private landlords can’t list on realestate.com.au or Domain directly, but advertising your rental through a service like ours puts your ad on the big portals while you keep control of enquiries, inspections and the final call on tenants.

And once the applications land, the job changes from marketing to vetting. That’s a topic with its own guide: how to screen tenants yourself, from reference checks to reading between the lines of an application.

The bottom line

Most rental ads lease the property eventually. Yours can do better than eventually. Take a little time with it: one fixed rent figure, a headline built on your strongest concrete feature, a description that covers what the listing fields can’t (inclusions, pets, the garden, the honest quirks), wording that stays on the right side of the advertising rules, and a read-aloud pass before you publish. That’s the difference between an ad that sits in the scroll and one that has you choosing between quality applications by the weekend.

And if you’d rather not figure out the portals on your own, that’s the bread-and-butter of what we do: your ad on the major sites, with real people to call seven days a week, and the whole renting-out process mapped step by step whenever you need it.

FAQ

How long should a rental ad be? Usually 150 to 300 words of description, plus the headline. Completeness matters far more than length: cover the inclusions, the pet position, the outdoor space and the location specifics, and stop. If a tenant still has to email you to ask who mows the lawn, the ad’s not done; if you’re padding with adjectives, it’s overdone.

Can I advertise a rent range or “offers over”? No. NSW, Victoria, Queensland, WA, SA and Tasmania all require a single fixed advertised rent, and several states also ban accepting offers above it. Advertise one number.

Can I say “no pets” in my ad? Be careful. Most states now limit a landlord’s ability to refuse pets outright: tenants apply, and refusals generally need a prescribed reason or tribunal backing. “Pets considered on application” is the safer and more application-friendly wording in most markets.

Can I write “would suit a professional couple”? Best not to. Describing your ideal tenant can stray into unlawful discrimination (family status, age and other characteristics are protected). Describe the property and location instead; the right tenants will self-select.

Do I need to put the bond and available date in the description? No. On the major portals those are structured fields you complete when listing, and they display in their own section of the ad. Spend your description on what the fields can’t say.

Should I put my phone number or “no agents, deal direct” in the ad? No. Personal contact details and “private rental” flags attract scammers and can give an otherwise keen tenant pause, and the portals route enquiries to you anyway. Be upfront that you’re the owner when people enquire and at inspections, just not in the ad itself.

What if I get no good applications in the first two weeks? Read your enquiries before you change anything. Lots of enquiries but no applications points to price or condition; barely any enquiries points to the ad itself (photos, headline, platform). Then act accordingly: compare your rent against currently advertised similar properties, or refresh the first three photos and rewrite the headline around your strongest concrete feature. A stale ad with a price drop of $10 to $20 often moves within days.

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Related stories: How much rent should I charge? · How to screen tenants: a landlord’s guide · How long does it take to rent out a property privately?

By the PropertyNow team

This article is general information, not legal advice. Tenancy and advertising rules vary by state and change over time; check your state’s tenancy authority or seek professional advice for your situation.