After converting your property into a rental, the next thing to focus on is landing great tenants. To ensure that you’ll protect your earnings, it’s essential to welcome the right tenants into your unit.
The best tenants pay the rent on or before the due date, leave a minimal wear and tear in your property, report property issues right away or file for maintenance requests, and honor the quiet enjoyment of other tenants or neighbors.
But how do you land such a tenant? Keep reading to find out!
Recommended Tips to Land Tenants
Two ways are open to landlords to gain great tenants on their rental property. This involves effective marketing and tenant screening. Marketing is essential since it gathers a large pool of prospects which allows you to filter for the best tenants.
Here are different ways to market your vacant rental home:
Open House
Hosting an open house can be a very effective marketing technique. Most prospective renters prefer a property tour before making a final decision to rent a unit. Before launching an open house though, you need to prepare your rental home.
Make sure that it looks immaculate and everything is in working condition. If you have existing tenants that are due to move soon, you can discuss a reasonable schedule with them for property viewings.
Yard Signs
One of the most common ways to market a rental property is by displaying “for rent” signs in a highly visible area. It should be designed to capture attention. Strategic landlords make bright and attractive yard signs that include their contact information. The more easily the sign is spotted, the more inquiries you draw from prospects.
If you still have tenants staying in the property, who will be moving out shortly, make sure the sign doesn’t result in people attempting to view the property, thus disturbing the current tenants.
Real Estate Listing Sites
Online advertising is cheaper or even free. It also makes it easy to find high-quality leads and market your property to a vast market. Consider promoting your rental home on popular listing sites such as Zillow and Trulia.
In addition to this, ensure that you use professional images that show your property in the best light. Beautiful photos and well-written property descriptions earn higher views and lead to more property inquiries.
Newspaper
A lot of people browse the classified section of newspapers. If you’re targeting retirees or an older demographic, they can still prefer to scan newspapers to find rental places.
Word of Mouth/ Networking
Another effective way to find potential tenants is by spreading the word in your network of contacts. Your network can assist you by sharing information about your rental property among their own network.
Send an email to colleagues, clients and other people you know. They can readily help you. You can also talk about your rental property to new people you meet during networking events. Word-of-mouth marketing can be highly effective and therefore shouldn’t be overlooked.
Social Media
Using social media in finding great tenants can be great. Plenty of social media users can make property ads that gain more exposure for their rentals. Your close followers can click the share button and enable your posts to be viewed by even more people.
The speed at which the property ad and be shared throughout social media is also beneficial to you. What’s more, you can regularly update and monitor your property ad at to increase the chances of finding more leads. If you are going to use social media as a marketing tool, video is the best format to do so.
Current Tenants
Ask your existing tenants whether they know other people looking to rent can be an effective way to market your rentals as well. As people who have first hand experience of renting your property, they can provide reviews to prospective renters.
If they’re unable to renew the lease due to a job relocation for instance and you’re parting ways on good terms then it’s highly likely that they’ll be excellent promoters of your rental.
Advice on Welcoming the Right Renters
Earning your success as a rental property owner entails placing great tenants on your property. The wrong one can lead to great stress and affect your bottom line. There are ways to avoid the problem of dealing with bad tenants. Here are suggested ways to land great tenants:
Application Form
It’s crucial to find out more details about your potential renters. Letting them complete an application form allows you to find out the basic things regarding their income, rental history and/ or their employment status.
Not all prospects are open to finishing an application so if they refuse to fill out the form, this can already signify a red flag. It filters those who are serious about renting your unit.
Credit Checking
Seek authorization from the applicant to run a credit check. It’s important to learn if the prospect has records of bankruptcies or evictions.
However, there may be good explanations behind these situations, so before making a final decision, you can ask the prospect to share their side of the story first. From there you’ll be in a better position to make an informed decision.
Income Verification
Ask for legitimate proof of income such as the latest pay stubs. By studying the numbers, you can also conclude whether the prospective renter can afford paying the rental charge each month.
Bottom Line
Landing the best tenants is a combination of performing strategic marketing and detailed tenant screening. These crucial steps help eliminate the risks of having difficult renters in your property.
You can also hire a trusted property management company such as Taylor Street Property Management who’s equipped to provide excellent marketing and tenant screening services. Contact us today to learn about our property management services!
