When You Can’t Get Your Property Rented
Why is my property not renting seems to come up quite often when I talk to landlords.
Well it usually comes down to a few minor problems. Your property not renting may look like the one in the image here, that could be a real problem, but hopefully it’s not your problem.
The biggest one typically is your rent is too high.
OverPriced Properties
If you’re not paying attention to the local market, you might have a misrepresented value of what your property should be renting for monthly. Especially in a tough market!
Even if you have a property management company in place, you need to understand what the local market rents are for properties similar to yours.
It’s your property, you need to know what’s going on.
Now if your rental pricing is right, but you’re simply not getting any calls, that might be symptomatic of your next problem, your marketing.
Lack of Marketing
In my last article I explained why vacancies are a landlords silent killer.. Because of that you need to put some effort in to market the heck out of that vacancy!
One ad on a free rental site won’t cut it.
A two paragraph massively abbreviated ad like we used to see in newspapers isn’t good enough.
Not bothering to include quality pictures can take you out of consideration.
And the list goes on.
You need to be everywhere, run ads in three four or more places, post signs in the property window, show up on Facebook and other areas. You need to write out an informative enticing ad that draws people in and reminds them they NEED to see your property as they don’t want to miss it. You need good pictures that highlight your properties best features.
You need all that and maybe more, like basic staging, perhaps new paint, renovations and professional cleaners going through so it looks perfect.
It seems like a lot of work, but if it saves you one additional month of vacancy that little bit of extra work has likely saved you a thousand dollars or more.
The last challenge you may have is you have a bad property.
It’s An Ugly House Dude!
If you’ve been involved in Real Estate for any length of time, you’ve seen these properties.
Maybe it’s the one where the landlord let the previous tenants paint, and they were very fond of black and purple… Surprise most tenants don’t want to move into a dark and depressing place, so paint it .
Perhaps it’s the property that people cross the street to avoid walking in front of? Sure dandelions are a pretty yellow, but having the front yard covered with them might indicate to potential tenants you don’t care about the property, or perhaps the overgrown bushes and scrubs are just too scary for even you to venture onto the property?
There are also the simply rundown places that look worn and tired. These are the properties where the owner gets plenty of calls and books many showings, but strangely enough people never show up for the viewings. Here’s a bulletin, if the house looks ugly or scary from the outside they probably just kept on driving and didn’t stop.
Now I know none of the people reading this have ugly houses (or at least I hope not), but it’s worth taking a serious look at your property from the street to really see what kind of first impression it’s leaving.
There could be some minor fixups that would change the appeal drastically, so do yourself a favour and go take a street side look.
Property Not Renting? It’s Not That Hard To Fill, With Some Education
Here’s the after we renovated image. Compare it to the image at the top of the page, which one would you rent? Which one would you not even bother visiting?
Filling vacant properties isn’t that hard, it can be tougher in slow markets, but even where I’m located where we are currently going through 8-12% vacancy rates if you systematically attack it, you can get your property rented in a reasonable amount of time.
You do know your local vacancy rate don’t you? Knowing this is pretty darn important so as part of your homework after reading this I need you to go figure it out.
Then post in the comments below where you’re located (not the actual address, but City, province or state) and by sharing your info other landlords can get a better appreciation of what’s out there and what’s going on!
One more thing, if this is helping you please share it with other people on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or simply just forwarding the email! Thee are some handy share buttons below to make that even easier!