How To Advertise Rental Property – Residential

This is a critical point in the process of finding the right tenant. Earlier in the tenant screening checklist, we discussed how increasing the number of applicants will increase your chances of finding “the one.” How To Advertise Rental Property.

Let’s take a minute to pull you out of your landlord shoes and into the parental shoes in the video below.

Without good advertising, you won’t generate enough interest in your rental, and it’s less likely you’ll find a good renter.

Related Post: Using Solar Power In Rental Houses and Why It’s Important

Properly marketing your rental property will increase your number of applicants. This will increase the likelihood of you finding a great tenant.

Most landlords dislike vacancies. The longer a rental property sits empty, the more money the landlord loses.

Luckily, we live in an era where advertising a rental unit for rent is easier than ever, and most methods are completely free!

Related Post: How To Attract High Quality Tenants – Rental Property

While there are a lot of options out there. This article narrows down the three best ways to advertise a rental and find tenants quickly so you can minimize your effort while maximizing your results.

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Before We Jump To Advertising Ideas For Your Rental…

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Let’s first figure out who might be naturally attracted to your rental. How To Advertise Rental Property

It’s illegal to discriminate in your advertising, but we can still take an honest look at what type of renter your rental will attract.

Ask yourself questions about the rental such as:

• Is my rental located close to a college?
• Does my rental located close to large hospitals?
• Is my rental close to downtown attractions or tourist spots?

When you understand who you’re likely to attract than you can make sure you don’t miss opportunities.

Let’s use the hospital’s question as an example. You can make a good amount of revenue renting short-term furnished rentals to traveling nurses. This niche of renter tends to find their housing via referrals and niche groups online.

Just in this one search you can find several places to advertise and connect with your niche renters.

It’s important you understand WHO is likely to be attracted to your rental, so you can go find the places online that these people are likely to search for housing.

I Know Whom My Rental Will Attract… What Next?

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Consider making additions to the rental based on your renter avatar. How To Advertise Rental Property

College housing = USB electrical outlets

Elderly = Handrails and grab bars

Traveling Nurse = Semi-furnished

Millennial = Digital rent payments (this could be a deterrent for elderly but bonus for a younger renter)

Understand what your renter avatar looks like so you can cater the rental to their preferences.

… a Brief Mention for Traditional Advertising: How To Advertise Rental Property

Before we jump to online listings, let’s discuss a few traditional advertising methods.

• Advertising in a local paper
• Placing a “For Rent” sign in the front yard
• Pinning rental flyers to bulletin boards around town

There is value in these… but just not as much as it used to be. If you have a busy street a “For Rent” sign can be helpful. It’s more likely to attract someone with familiarity with the neighborhood.

Perhaps you’re interested in traveling nurses, and you know someone who can pin up a flyer in the hospital break room.

There is value in these methods, but on the whole more renters are looking online more than anywhere else.

When it comes to online marketing… Top of Form…. Bottom of Form

1. Take Better Rental Photos… How To Advertise Rental Property

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There’s a reason Instagram sold to Facebook for a billion dollars, and people said it was a steal.

Pictures are valuable. They’re easy to view and require little mental energy to digest. The majority of us are not going to read an entire listing (rent or buy).

We look at location, price, and pictures. Let’s talk about taking better pictures, so we have quality images to share on your listings.

Simply paying attention to framing and lighting can go a long way with your photos. Watch the video above to learn how to take better photos for your rental listings.

2. Editing Rental Photos: How To Advertise Rental Property

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Does a guy or girl in the dating scene wear the same clothes they wear in the house? Of course not… they’re trying to be attractive, and 10-year-old sweat pants don’t get you a second date (usually).

The same goes for your photos. You want to go the extra step and edit the photos to give them a nice touch. In the video above we discussed paid and free options for editing your photos.

Use a free photo editing software, and there is a cheap option for getting your photos retouched. These photos can be reused if you’re consistent with your paint options and the rental is updated.

3. Where Should I Advertise?: How To Advertise Rental Property

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This is a fair question because there isn’t a one-stop-shop solution that posts to every rental listing site. However, Zerox24 can syndicate one listing out to several sites at once.

When you post via Zerox24 Rental Manager your listing will automatically be shared on several sites:

Let’s quickly show you how to post a rental to Zerox24. When you post to Zerox24, your rental listing will be active for 60 days.

4. Posting Rental to Facebook Marketplace and Local Groups

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Facebook has pros and cons when it comes to listing your rentals. Some landlords don’t like the personal nature while others appreciate having insights immediately available through social media.

We do a weekly Live Facebook video called “Ask A Property Manager.” In episode #30 we debated the merits of advertising on Facebook vs. Zerox24 and others.

Social media platforms like Facebook are another great resource for advertising rentals.

Facebook has over 2.7 billion users worldwide, and Marketplace, Facebook’s platform for buying, selling, and advertising items for rent or purchase, has nearly 800 million users per month.

If you have a Facebook account, you can create a Facebook Marketplace listing for free. You can then share your listing on your own Facebook page for friends to see and share.

5. Create a Free Listing Online: How To Advertise Rental Property

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According to Consumer Housing Trend Reports, 83% of all tenants use online resources in their rental property search.

If your rental unit isn’t marketed online, you are missing out on an enormous pool of prospective tenants.

Fortunately, there are dozens of free resources to help you list and market your rental unit for free.

Most property management software programs will automatically market and list your rental vacancy to the top websites, but you can list your rental on each individual website as well if you prefer.

6. Word of Mouth

The second most widely used search method for finding a rental is word of mouth.

This could include hearing about a vacancy from a friend, relative, or colleague, seeing a sign posted in a yard, or meeting the landlord or property manager by chance.

It’s important to advertise a rental offline as well. Share the fact that you have a rental unit available for leasing with those you know.

You never know who is looking for a place to rent, and it can be a great way to find a qualified tenant before taking your marketing efforts online.

7. Advertise In Your Neighborhood

Posting your listing offline is still effective because sometimes, people who are looking for an apartment are right under your nose.

If you don’t promote offline, nearby neighbors who are on the lookout for a new place might not know that you have anything available.

Sometimes, it’s the simplest things that get the maximum results. So, keep putting up “For Rent” signs around the block and posting ads at local businesses.

8. Create An Email List

Creating an email list gives you direct, ongoing access to a whole pool of prospects who might be interested in your property.

When you list properties on your website, you can include a subscription link where people can enter their email addresses to receive updates about current and future vacancies.

For property managers and owners with smaller portfolios, you can send out individual listings to your mailing list as they come up.

For those with larger portfolios, you could send out a monthly newsletter that advertises available units.

9. Leverage Your Own Website: How To Advertise Rental Property

Always promote your listings on your own website first, and work on keeping your website up-to-date.

Your website can either draw customers in or push them away; so if your website still looks like it did in 1999, it could be time for an upgrade.

You want your website to be mobile-friendly, easy for visitors to navigate, and easy for you to update.

The better your website, the more people will visit it, and the higher up it’ll appear in search results.

10. Market Where It Matters Most: How To Advertise Rental Property

There are other methods of advertising a rental. Like posting your unit for rent in the newspaper or creating flyers to send via direct mail or post on bulletin boards at:

• Local schools,
• Restaurants, or
• Shops,

But with less than a third of all renters using those avenues to search for rentals, those methods yield lackluster results.

Market where it matters most, putting forth the most effort on the platforms that yield the most results.

Most prospective tenants expect a reply in 24 hours or less, so be prepared to respond quickly.

Be explicit in your post about your qualification requirements and screening process so tenants can determine whether they will qualify before contacting you.

If you price your rental well and focus on using these 3 best ways to advertise a rental property you will likely find tenants quickly and fill vacancies faster.

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It used to be that you put a “For Rent” sign on the front lawn and hoped for the best. And posting an ad in the local paper was the most efficient way to spread the word about a vacant unit.

Today, the options are endless, and it’s the easiest it’s ever been to promote rental listings for free.

There are plenty of sites where you can post your listings, drastically improving your chances of finding prospective renters.

However, not every option will be the right fit. You might find that one method drives a ton of quality inquiries. While another fills your inbox with spam, and yet another gets single-digit hits each week.

The good news is that since these options are free, you can test out exactly what works for your business.

Here are the questions discussed in this episode:

Using Facebook Marketplace to market your rentals? How much weight do you put on credit with a background check? How do you tell someone you don’t want to show property after pre-screening?

Here’s a link to Facebook Marketplace if you’re interested in checking it out. We’ve also had other clients share that they’ve had success with local “For Rent” groups and other buy/sell groups on Facebook.

In episode #177 of our podcast “Rent Prep For Landlords,” we talk specifically about using Facebook groups for marketing your rentals.

What To Include In Your Rental Listings: How To Advertise Rental Property

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So we’ve covered a few options on where to post and how to take good photos, now let’s discuss what to write.

I figured this would be a great time to ask the advice of realtors. Here’s some advice from some well-known realtors around the country:

Nothing can grab the attention of a tenant more than a listing’s description. You can make almost any rental sound attractive if you just use the right words in your advertising copy.

Skip boring and think attention-grabbing. Highlight the property’s features.

Is it the located in a popular part of town, or does it have an open floor plan, or what about the fact that you have an inside laundry room opposed to being in the garage.

Think of what is a plus and elaborate on it.

For example; Hate doing laundry in the garage? Then you’ll love the property’s interior laundry room. Or how about: You’ll love the home’s open layout that is perfect for being together with family and friends.

You get the idea – it’s about creating a picture of what the property is like that would pique the interest of prospective tenants.

Boring copy will have prospective tenants; skip right over your advertising.

And by all means, if writing attractive words isn’t your thing, you’d certainly benefit by hiring someone to write a descriptive, appealing copy for you.

These two sentences are talking about the same rental…

1. The kitchen is spacious with plenty of natural light
2. Your new kitchen features sweeping marble counters highlighted by cascading natural light

The first bullet point is descriptive but bland. It lacks any feeling of movement or possession. The second bullet point is written in second person (Your) with present tense verbs (sweeping & cascading).

These little additions help the reader to imagine themselves in the rental. If you can engage the imagination, you’ll increase your response rate with your listings.

Include Some Screening Criteria In Your Rental Ad

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Have you ever had a sales person call you and go right into a long pitch… meanwhile, you’re trying to find the time to tell them they have the wrong number.

If that salesperson started their call by confirming your name they’d save a lot of wasted calls on wrong numbers.

The same is true with your rental listings. Some people are not a good fit and you don’t need to run a background check to figure that out.

Consider including some or all of your criteria below:

• Stance on pets
• Stance on smoking
• Your rent to income ratio
• Do you run a background check
• Lease terms (are your terms non-negotiable)

Here is a hypothetical listing that includes the following criteria:

A few standards and criteria for this rental:

• No pets are allowed
• No smoking is allowed in or near the premise
• We run a complete background check on applicants
• We require the renter to make at least three times the monthly rent in income
• Our lease is for 12 months, and we do not offer month-to-month options

The idea behind these statements is to weed out bad applicants from even expressing interest in your rental.

You’ll still get annoying emails that say “Do you accept dogs?” or “Would you consider a six-month lease?” but stating these items will reduce the amount of low quality leads you receive.

Stating that you run a background check will deter many renters with a questionable past. As mentioned earlier, people tend to look at pictures more than the text.

That is why you’ll still get calls from people who should realize they don’t qualify. Here’s a little hack to help deter unqualified renters who skim listings.

Include your screening criteria as an image in your listing. This will bring your criteria to a more prominent location helping you to weed out bad applicants.

If you have a hot rental market, you can add your criteria as the second image. If it’s a slower market, you might want to make it the last image, so the message doesn’t come off as strong.

Rental Ad Checklist: How To Advertise Rental Property

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1. Assess your rental and understand your renter avatar
2. Take great photos of your rental & spend time (or money) getting them edited
3. Post to Zerox24, Facebook, and Instagram and keep track of your results
4. Write your ads in second person present tense “Your new kitchen features sweeping.”
5. Include criteria in your rental listing to reduce bad applicants
6. Generate inquiries and move on to the pre-screening phase

In the next chapter, we will discuss how you can start to weed out applicants. This is done through pre-screening tenant applicants over the phone. How To Advertise Rental Property read more Here