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Strategies to Minimize Downtime Between Tenancies
Minimizing downtime between tenancies is essential for maintaining a consistent rental income. Extended vacancy periods…
What are the best methods of listing your rental and where? The correct answer is that there simply isn’t one great location or method but many. Multiple listings in spots best suited to reach your ideal renter are truly the only way to go. While it might take some leg work to get it all done, the goal is to find a mutually beneficial rental situation that keeps things running smoothly for the long haul. Finding a great tenant upfront saves time and money down the road. And the better you screen your potential renters upfront, the less time you have to spend showing your property.
The first step is “getting ready” which will require you to get out the camera, video equipment, tape measure, and history on the property. A strong listing will help good candidates fall in love with your property and undesirable matches vet themselves out. For example, your property images and details should illuminate what type of renter will be happy long-term. So if there are great family rooms and shared spaces, highlight them. If the location is close to a lively city, highlight it. If it’s in a quiet suburb with a large yard, highlight it. Your property’s attributes help buyers decide whether the home is really for them, and in turn, helps you show the property only to candidates that are sure they are ready to rent it should you deem them a great match.
When you are set and ready to list you will need to throw out a large net to grab a great pool of potential renters. If you have your own page, list it there. While you will need to advertise beyond your page, of course, having one reference page you control makes it very simple to have a landing spot to refer candidates to for questions, updates, and the like.
Social sites and marketplace sites are great spots to list properties. While they provide little to no screening of potential renters, unlike traditional rental listing sites, they do have the benefit of getting many views and hopefully referrals to others. Great examples of these are Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, Nextdoor, Oodle, and Facebook Groups.
While social and marketplace sites are great, as many of us have experienced with these types of sites, you will get many inquiries that are simply just that, and end there. To ensure your listings are more fruitful you will want to include sites in which their sole purpose is to help people find homes. Well-trafficked and recommended sites for these include Rent.com, Rentals.com, Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and HotPads.
If your property has a unique feature such as being near a military facility or other location that would attract out-of-town renters, we recommend a service like Zumper which offers potential candidates more info about the area as well, serving as a valuable tool. If your property is available to renters with pets you should use a site like People With Pets. Additionally, if you would consider tenants who would like to rent-to-own, Rentdigs would be a good site to consider listing, as they offer this service in addition to traditional rentals.
Listing, showing, and securing an agreement to fill your property will mean you need to invest time and money to obtain a successful rental. Our property management services include all of these critical elements of the process, saving both your valuable time and expenses. Utilizing Ferguson Property Management ensures you have a dedicated Account Manager to handle these details skillfully. Your property will also be listed on our well-visited website. Our services ensure a turnkey owner-tenant experience.
Being a landlord doesn’t have to be stressful. We’re committed to complete transparency, so you can relax while we do the heavy lifting.