Ready to welcome new tenants into your rental property? Are you waiting for them with open arms? Great! But, you’re going to have to extend your arms a bit further to get the tenants you want. Learning how to market rental property is more that just taking pictures and listening in on different sites. There’s an art to painting your property’s picture and getting people to stop, look at it, and want it. So get your berets out.
Here’s one thing to keep in mind, you want to market your property but you want tenants to come to you. You should want tenants coming to your property instead of having to work extra hard to put the property in front of them. Let’s see how this can happen .
Flaunt it
You want to have a very clean property. Not just clean, but neat. Pictures of neat, organized properties are way more effective than messy, poor-quality photos of properties. Don’t take several pictures of the same thing. If you want to show off a certain feature, like the fireplace, you can take a close-up of it but also show the entire room. Don’t let viewers think you’re hiding something.
Speaking of hiding things, if something is wrong with the property, you might want to put in the description. They will appreciate your honesty.
Three 3 you should know what you want
- How much money do you want? Are you going to keep rental prices the way they are or raise the rent? Use rental comps to help you decide what makes the most sense. Tools like Rentometer and Mashvisor help real estate investors and landlords know what to charge tenants.
- What kind of tenants do you want? Know your target niche and how to appeal to them.
- When do you want them? Make sure the property will be ready based on the time-frame set.
Related: 5 Must-Have Features of an Income Property
Capitalize on every single resource
Okay, time to list the property. Make sure you don’t limit yourself to Craigslist or Facebook. Think of all social media websites, listing sites, and even private groups. Go to universities and advertise on their off-campus listing. Advertise to companies who pay for their employee’s housing. Put a sign in your yard and set an open house time. Put it in the newspaper. Finally, don’t forget about the best marketing method: word of mouth. Ask tenants to refer people and it might even be worth it to offer the current tenants a reward for doing so.
Related: Road to Renting: Rental Property Marketing
Plan B: go short-term
If you find that filling a vacancy is becoming too difficult, consider listing the property on a short-term rental website such as Airbnb or VRBO. This is a great way to bring in money in the meantime and the income might be greater than income from a long-term rental.
Related: Real Estate Investing: Traditional vs. Airbnb Investments
Bottom line, keep your options open and use all of the resources you have. Remember, even though you’re marketing your rental property, you want to tenants to feel like they need to meet certain standards to be able to rent such a great property.
