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Marketing Your Vacant Property

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A Vacant Property Is A Problem Property

When you have a vacant property, you have multiple problems.

  • You’re losing income
  • You’re paying out of your pocket to support the property
  • You insurance may go up if it’s vacant more than 30-60 days (did you realize you often need to report extended vacancies to your insurance company or your insurance is void?)
  • No one is looking after your property (other than you)
  • Vacant properties chew up your personal time (showings, inspections, phone calls)

None of these are fun and often they lead to resentment of being a property owner, an investor and a landlord as it suddenly has become work. Costly work!

Filling A Vacant Property Takes Work

I’m not going to lie to you, filling vacant properties does take work, but if you do the majority up front it can save a ton of costly work involved with extended vacancies!

One piece of that work is effective marketing. Or as it’s commonly called selling!

Yep, you need to be able to sell your property to prospective tenants. Because if you’re not, someone else down the line will and you’ll lose out on a potential great tenant.

Here’s my secret tip (it’s really not that secret, but I’m amazed how surprised many landlords are when they hear it), write an awesome ad for your property and use it over and over and over!

For each of my units I have an ad that I’ve written up that I have saved as a Word document. That original ad may have taken two or three hours of writing and research, but I use it over and over again so over the lifetime of a property that extra work in the beginning pays off multiple times over.

Often I will have two or three variations of the ad that I’ll have saved in that Word document so I have different versions for a vacancy in the spring, int he summer or perhaps the winter.

Sometimes I create a new version by cutting and pasting from my original versions as times and circumstances change or as I find more effective ways to attract tenants.

Selling Your Property in Conversation

But it doesn’t stop with the ad. The ad is just to get someone to call or email or text me.

Now that I’ve got a live person showing at least a bit of interest it’s time to start selling my property!

This does get into some crossover at this point though. There’s no sense selling someone on your property if you’re not going to be renting it to them which is why it’s important to start asking some screening questions right away as well. (You were aware I have a screening course that helps you with this?, You can order it here, How To Screen Tenants Like an Educated Landlord)

Questions like when will you be needing it? If they are just looking or it’s three months down the road you may not be interested in marketing as hard. If it’s in the next several weeks, well time to tighten that sales hat up a notch or two.

During those screening interview stages you need to be able to promote the important parts that will add value for the tenant and put your property int he best light.

This could involve finding out your tenant works only a few blocks away, look at the money they will save on the commute! Or if you accept pets and they have a dog knowing that the dog park is just down the street increase the value and the importance of your property.

They have two elementary age kids? Well, were they aware one of the best schools in the district is only two blocks away? (Obviously you need to be aware whether the school is one of the better ones, but that’s part of your original homework, don’t be “that” landlord or “that” salesperson who makes up stuff just to get the deal closed!).

Selling Your Property In Person

You need to sell your potential tenants on your vacant propertyOnce you’ve confirmed the potential tenant is a qualified applicant, you need to get them to the property, and sell in person.

Now, if you’ve got a great property it should sell itself. Although it may still require you pointing out what’s so great about it.

If you have a “less great” property, you may want to step back and consider what you can do to change that.

When I’m showing my property to possible tenants I often ask them how long they’ve been looking for a place and what they are finding out there. You know what comes back?

Comments like “Everything I’ve looked at so far has been a dump”, “The last place we looked at hadn’t had a good cleaning in years” and “There was half an inch of dust on the baseboards, I wouldn’t let my pet live there”. If your property resembles any of these remarks you have an uphill battle when it comes to filling that vacant property.

95% of my tenants stay with me over a year. The majority are closer to three, so every time a tenant vacates a property and they have been there over a year, we repaint. We can do it quickly as I’ve shared multiple times in my How Painting Can Save You Time article,

We also typically bring in professional cleaners after painting and any repairs are done.

Just by doing these two strategies we end up getting comments like “The place is so much cleaner than everything else I’ve seen” and “Is this newly painted, it looks so nice!”

That’s the type of feedback that gets your vacant property rented quickly. And we all want to rent our property quickly when it’s vacant right?

Marketing Recap

Are we in agreement that having a vacant property is costing you money?

If so, then you need to take some steps to remedy that and let’s recap what we’ve talked about.

  1. You need a good ad!
  2. You need to sell to prospects when they contact you and
  3. You need to sell the benefits of your property when they see your property.

Can you do all that?

If you can’t, tell me in the comments below what the problem is. Just to spice it up, maybe include part of your ad if that’s your problem. And maybe, just maybe (ok I probably will), if I get enough responses I will help someone fix that ad up a bit.

If it’s an issue with how your property shows, explain it below and we’ll see who needs my help the most!

Oh and don’t forget, if you have other landlords who could use any of my information, share this stuff! If it’s helping you it will probably help them too!

Comments

  1. Hello Bill,
    Love reading your articles. The above rewritten add is too long in my opinion. For sure, here in California people are too busy to spend time reading long adds, nobody has patience.
    I thank you for your great advice. I’ve been a landlord for over 30 years, but still enjoying
    reading about real estate and different investments.

    • Thanks Elizabeth,

      True, it’s a long read but here’s what I’ve learned for my market and for most markets. If I write a long more in-depth ad with answers to the majority of the questions I get over and over and that tries to address benefits more than features it accomplishes two things.

      The tenants that take the time are more invested in seeing it. They’re more committed and they already have answers to most of the questions that pop up. They tend to be more flexible with seeing the property and they tend to be the types of tenants I want.

      I find with shorter ads I end up wasting more of my time answering questions to people who have zero intent on renting the place, but were too busy to find out it only had two bathrooms, versus the three they wanted, or that the bus didn’t stop close enough. Often times people who are too busy to read the ad aren’t too busy to take up 15 minutes of my time that could have been easily avoided by taking two minutes to read it.

      Granted different markets may require different marketing. Some landlords I talk to swear by videos. Many tenants these days don’t have time to read, but can spend hours watching videos on their phone so it serves their market. I’ve had limited success with videos for renting, but great success with videos for selling a property, again it depends ont he potential clients and the market.

      Often it’s worth experimenting, I typically have two or three ads for most properties, some I have half a dozen or more that I rotate through as vacancies occur or as the market changes.

      Glad you’re enjoying the articles and thanks for leaving a comment,

      Bill

  2. Hi Bill,

    We don’t have a problem with vacancy, but one problem we have run into repeatedly is early move in dates. Everyone always wants to move in early and says that they’ll pay a prorates amount, but balks when it actually comes time to pay. How do you deal with this problem? I like to rent to the best applicant, but I always seem to end up losing a few dollars. Any suggestions?

    • Hi Carolyn, glad to hear that’s not a problem anymore!

      This is one of those topics that you need to decide where you want to stand. If you’re rental market is tight and tenants have few options you can dictate more strictly that if they want in early it needs to be paid (usually on a pro-rated basis) and paid in advance at the time of signing the lease or prior.

      In a more relaxed market, you may need to use early access as a bargaining tool. As in, if you could start moving in a week early would that help us sign a lease today?

      Finally in a weak market, early access might be the only way to get someone in. I’m not a big fan of giving away rent, but sometimes the market dictates. For a recent new tenant of mine I provided early access so he could move over a couple weekends. I charged him just under half the month’s rent for two weeks and picked up all the utilities during that period.

      It was a win win for both of us, he didn’t have to panic move over one day, I had someone in my property and stemmed the money coming out of my pocket to cover expenses.

      Ultimately you need a win win scenario and if you find what that takes, again dictated by the market, you end up with happier tenants that stay with you longer.

      Bill

  3. As always Bill, a great article. Not everyone is a salesperson, but your tips are ones anybody can use to be the best seller they can be.

  4. I have a vacancy. Can you let me know if this add can be improved please?

    4Bd + Den Townhouse for rent in Devon

    Rent reduced from $1445 to $1395 for a great deal and available today.

    This large Townhouse is freshly painted and renovated and has
    4 Spacious bedrooms on the upper floor, finished Basement with a den storage room and laundry room, 2 bathrooms, walk in Kitchen Pantry, and 4 Appliances.

    Total: 1800 Square feet

    LOCATION:Close to walking trails, river valley, parks, schools, shopping areas, and hospital.

    Devon is minutes from Edmonton, Airport, Leduc, Nisku, Spruce Grove, Calmar.

    No large dogs, small pets negotiable.

    Rent: $1395
    Security Deposit: :$1395
    Utilities: Extra

    Call or text 780-718-5884

    • Bill,
      Also wondering were you would recommend adverticing?

      I have been using Kijij and Hopestreet Properties.

    • How’s This?

      Headline
      Large Spacious 4 Bedroom Townhouse Waiting For YOU!

      This freshly renovated townhouse is an incredible deal at only $1,395 and it’s ready to move in immediately.

      We’ve freshly painted the property making it look and feel like a brand new place and once you see it you’ll be amazed by all the space you’ll have in your new home.

      From the large bedrooms all located on the upper floor to the finished basement everyone will be exited to have their own space whether you have a large family or you simply have a group of roommates sharing the place. Did I mention it’s 1,800 square feet?Think how much room that will give everyone and obviously a place this big comes with more than one bathroom which is a prerequisite, so in answer to that question you get two full bathrooms so no lineups.

      But it doesn’t end there. Even with all the bedrooms there’s still room for a separate den! Or craft room or escape room for a busy mom or dad, use it for whatever works for you. Plus a laundry room, can you believe it you even get your own laundry so no trips out to a laundry mat.

      Now, no description of this place would be complete without talking about the kitchen. It comes complete with four appliances (dishwasher score) and has it’s own pantry which once you start using you’ll want never look at another place without one.

      Finally lets talk about the great location. We’re right by walking trails, close to the river valley and there are plenty of parks and schools nearby making this ideal for a family. On top of that the hospital is nearby shopping is a quick trip and since we’re just outside of Edmonton you’ll be able to live the quiet life without all the hustle and bustle of city life.

      Unfortunately we can’t accept large dogs, but we will consider small pets as pets are part of many families.

      Rent for this incredible home is only $1,395 and we require a matching security deposit prior to move in. Utilities are not included so please be aware you will need to have them under your name. We’re very diligent about providing great properties for great tenants so we do thorough credit checks and reference checks so if you’re looking for a great property and a great landlord call or text us today at 780-718-5884 before this property ends up with someone else and you miss out.