Zillow launches rental listings and search service

NEW YORK Dec 15 (Reuters) - Real estate website Zillow.com, one of the most popular vehicles for U.S. home sales searches, on Tuesday said it expanded its services to include the rental market.

Zillow.com added a rental listings and search to its home shopping service and database of more than 90 million U.S. homes. For the first time on Zillow, anyone can list a home for rent, and users can now search both rental homes and homes for sale.

According to a recent survey by Harris Interactive, 25 percent of people who plan to move in the next three years say they will search for both homes for rent and homes for sale.

"In today's volatile housing market, many would-be sellers are opting to rent for a few years and ride out the market, while many home shoppers are just trying to decide whether to buy or rent," Spencer Rascoff, Zillow's chief operating officer, said in a statement.

"With the launch of rental listings and search we are arming our more than 8 million monthly users with information, tools and options to make the right housing decisions for them today," he said.

Zillow is also offering a feature that allows a user to search by monthly payment, allowing home shoppers to simultaneously find for-sale and for-rent homes, based on a monthly payment they can afford, the company said. (Reporting by Julie Haviv; Editing by Padraic Cassidy)