Set up a multifamily community

This guide explains how to set up multifamily communities and floorplans in RentEngine and connect your available units.

This setup is recommended for all buildings with 2+ rental units, so that accompanied showings can be scheduled back-to-back at different units of the same building.
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Do you need a paid contract?

Zillow requires a paid multifamily contract for buildings with more than 24 units total. Apartments.com requires one for buildings with more than 4 units total. These thresholds apply to the total number of apartment (not condo) units in the building — not just the ones you're advertising.

After creating a community, you can edit it from the Communities tab. Click Edit on a community to open its settings, which are organized in tabs.

You can return here at any time to update the initial community details, photos, and amenities you entered when the community was created.

The Marketing tab handles branding, syndication, and lead generation for the community:

Build a custom listings widget for the community website directly from the Marketing tab. When opened here, the community is already pre-selected in the filter, so the embed code is ready to copy.

You can still adjust the Filtering Options to create different widget versions for different buildings or criteria.

Configure the default showing method and settings for units in this community. These can be customized at the unit level.

Community defaults control building-level policies that units inherit. These apply at the building level instead of the company level.

Initially, these settings are inherited from your portfolio defaults unless customized here.

Key defaults you can set here include:

To revert everything back to portfolio defaults, click Reset to portfolio defaults.

If you change a default after units already exist, a flow appears on save so you can choose which units to update.

Floorplans are only required if your multifamily building has a paid Zillow or Apartments.com contract and has no active units at the time of setup. Adding a floorplan ensures the property continues to display on those platforms even when no individual units are available, so the contract can be connected to RentEngine.

If your building does not have a paid contract, you can skip this step.

Note: we do not recommend manually adding floorplans unless directed by RentEngine support

Once the Community property and floorplans exist, link your active units.

The unit is now connected and eligible for syndication with your paid contract.

Once you've completed the steps above, send an email to your Zillow or Apartments.com rep to connect your paid contract to RentEngine. You'll need the building name, address, and Property ID (MFID), which you can find in the Communities tab view by clicking on edit for the corresponding community.

CC: [email protected], [email protected]

Subject: Feed Transfer Request – RentEngine

Hi there,

We'd like to apply our paid Zillow Multifamily contract to properties syndicated via the RentEngineMFH feed.

Here are the buildings covered under our Zillow contract:

Please let us know if you need anything else to move forward.

Thank you,

[Your name]

CC: [email protected], [email protected]

Subject: Feed Transfer Request – RentEngine | [Your company name]

Hi there,

We'd like to apply our paid Apartments.com (CoStar) contract to properties syndicated via the RentEngine feed.

Here are the buildings that need to be connected:

Please let us know if anything else is needed to move forward.

Thanks,

[Your name]

Once your rep processes the request, you can verify the connection in RentEngine:

You can send leads to RentEngine from any contact form on your website, as long as form submissions are forwarded to your RentEngine email forwarding address. You can find this address in Command Center > Add Prospect (top right). It will look like this:

[email protected]

For the prospect to be automatically created in the Command Center, the email submission must include: