Quick Utility/Advertising Tip

Here’s a short tip that may work for those of you who include utilities in the rent.

If your rent is $1,100 with utilities and you are having troubles filling vacancies, change your ad to this.

Rent $995 per month plus fixed monthly utilities of only $105 per month.

People won’t see $1,100 anymore, they will see only $995. The extra bonus is many people search for rents of $999 and less on online sites, this puts you into more online search results.

It won’t work every time, but in my previous experiments, the number of calls basically tripled by making this one change.

I still collected the same amount each month, but how it was presented changed the perception.

This will work for any rent amount, with utilities built in. So if rent is only $475 with utilities included, you could advertise as $425 plus $50 fixed utilities. They key point being, if you need to appear more competitive and want to attract more calls, you have to get seen.

By having a more competitive looking price point, you will be much more visible.

Bonus Utility Tips

Granted your utility costs will likely be higher than $105 per month these days, but the tactic works all the way from renting a basement suite up to a complete single family home, just the numbers change.

In my region we’re able to actually create a separate contract outside of the lease allowing us some additional flexibility. This includes the ability to charge utility increases when applicable and to include over use clauses to protect us from tenants running the heat with the windows open.

Rules differ in every area so you may have to do a little research to see what you can do with this. We’re fortunate enough that our local rules give us the benefits of not only keeping it outside of the lease, but also having it tied to the lease as a breach if they fail to pay the utilities.

Where it gains the most benefit for landlords is we get to build in an extra $20-40 per month cash flow with this strategy. This does take a bit more math homework and diligence, but an hour’s work to make an extra $300 seems like good math to me ($25 extra per month for 12 months equals $300).

So if you average out your monthly utility costs to be $250, charge a flat $275, if it’s $190, charge $225, if it is $307, charge $345! Just build in extra cash flow to cover you off and to improve your bottom line!

If you’re interested in finding out how to apply this to your property leave me a comment below and I can walk you through it a bit more in depth. There are also additional methods you can use to not just leverage this, but to also get rebates back magnifying your cash flow even more! Let me know if your really interested in leveraging that cashflow more!