Vacant rental properties are like a huge zit on the face of your real estate business. Doesn’t it all look so much better when the vacancies are gone? For this reason, we have compiled 4 brilliant ideas that would help your rental property stand out when competition is tight:
- Show Off What Your Competitors Don’t Have
Stop focusing on what your rental property lacks and start highlighting what it does have. Even if your rental unit is not as new as compared to your competition, you can still easily attract the best renters. This could even be something as simple as exposed brick walls or hardwood flooring.
If your rental units have something that your neighboring units don’t, like an elevator or a parking garage, make sure you highlight these features in the listings. Make sure that your tenants know about these features as they tour your property or sift through third party rental advertisements.
- Post Quality Pictures
Nowadays, clear and crisp pictures can make a huge difference. The difference between the engagement received by high quality photos as compared to blurry, low quality ones is like night and day. This is especially true among younger renters as they rely on high quality pictures of a unit to decide whether it is actually even worth touring, let alone all-out renting.
- Iron Out Every Detail
Contrary to what most property owners believe, it helps to make sure every little detail is fixed and taken care of. For instance, getting kitchen drawer tracks fixed or hiring a painter to touch-up on living room walls.
It is highly likely that your rental unit will make its first impression online, therefore, you should fix all broken railing, dirty counters, and torn wallpapers ahead of time. In doing so, the first thing your prospective tenants will see will be quality units.
- Hire Effective Property Management
It is common for real estate companies to handle the marketing efforts of your rental property and facilitate referrals for supplemental income. Alternatively, you can also hire property management companies to take over the duties of standing out from your competitors for a fixed fee. They use special software’s that make managing properties easier, and of course offer a large range of other services, including handling the tenants screening process, managing communications and arbitrating tenant disputes. You can just sit back and let them take care of everything for you efficiently.
Quality Versus Speed
Sure, filling rental units quickly is a dream come true for every property owner. However, you should not ignore the long-term advantages of taking your time to find quality tenants. If you start ignoring a tight tenant screening process, you might lose more in the long run as opposed to the cost of a vacant property for a couple more days.
You see, if you ignore your standard marketing and screening procedures to stand out from your competition, you might also risk filling your unit with bad tenants. Bad tenants are more likely to not pay their rent on time or do something that will get them evicted. The entire eviction process could take as much as 2 months, and during this time, you wouldn’t be receiving rent anyway.
Final Thoughts
All of these tips may seem like they won’t have any effect on your rental property, but you will be surprised at how powerful they can be in attracting quality renters. Of course, if you can’t escape from your daily schedule to implement all of the above, you can always delegate them to your property manager.
If you haven’t hired a property manager already, click here to learn more about our services and how an experienced property manager can share some of your burdens.
