You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
-
For the next 5 weeks Jack’s weekly real estate lessons will focus on finding buyers fast. The old methods don’t work so well anymore as many of you are finding out.
Let’s use the forum to share ideas on what DOES WORK for you NOW.
I recently had a vacant rental. It took a month to find the right tenant. That’s about twice as long as usual. Usually I can just stick a sign in front of the house and one at the end of the street and get it rented in a week – 2 at the most.
Perhaps one of the problems was I was raising the rent. I had been charging $910. But there was a house right around the corner that is the same floor plan that was charging $1000 a month. So I thought I’d ask $950 to still be competitive but not too far below market.
I checked http://www.rentometer.com and $950 was right in line with the competition. ( I added my house there too)
This time, I ran ads on craigslists. I had to delete them every 2 days and repost to keep the ad at the top.
After 2 weeks of that not producing a tenant I also ran an ad on http://www.rentals.com Still nothing.
So I lowered the rent to $925 on week 3.
I also had a neighbor open the house at 9 am and close it up at 7 pm and added an open house sign at the end of the street and in front of the house.
I started getting more calls and many more lookers.
Week 4, I finally got a tenant. They came from my craigslist ad.
I should have reacted to the market faster and made the price change after 1 week. Daily Open houses from the beginning would have helped too. ( learn from my mistakes) You’ve got to make it easy for tenants to see the house when it is convenient for them.
What are you doing to get tenants and buyers faster?
Jackie
p.s. I found out the landlord who is getting $1000 is renting to Section 8. I would not do Section 8 even for the additional money.
Get the neighbors involved.
For an upcoming vacancy, my kids pass out flyers in the immediate neighborhood – “Choose your new neighbor”.
For a sale – we do a mailor(or have the kids really pound the pavement) with a digital photo of the house on the front along with “Tell a friend about Vienna”.Craigslist is the way to go in my neck of the woods for tenants – if there is no action, it’s overpriced.
As for Section 8, keep in mind that it’s tenant based and local. Meaning, it’s the tenant that qualifies and each jurisdiction runs it with autonomy. My county program sucks (Fairfax). However, the City of Alexandria program has been a cakewalk. I had an existing tenant in Alexandria that qualified. He’s a great guy with a disability. 12 years now of timely higher-end rent without a peep from him or the City.
Great idea Jimi.
When I do an open house the first day it is usually curious neighbors looking at the house. That’s a good time to recruit them too.
There’s a lot of competition for buyers.
to attract the best buyers you need to have the best house and/or deal to offer them
Your house needs to be in tip top condition and presented well.
If you can offer terms ( seller financing) then you’ll attract more buyers than those who won’t.
Something that’s always works for finding buyers who can get a loan is to contact the mortgage brokers who are advertising for financing.
Radio ads, newpaper ads, billboards — any kind of advertising that the mortgage brokers are doing will attract buyers.
Buyers contact the mortgage company to get preapproved for financing.
So that means the mortgage companies, banks and credit unions have file cabinets full of buyers who have already been approved for financing.Or– the lender might tell them that they cannot approve them for financing until they get some of their debt paid off or their credit cleaned up –
But even then, the lender has information on those buyers who could be potential lease option candidates for you.So, contact all the lenders, mortgage brokers, bank loan departments and credit unions to see who they have that is ready to go for your property.
Offering a BONUS to the lender to help you find a buyer fast will give them an extra incentive to get up from their desk and open the file cabinet then contact potential buyers.
What other ideas do YOU have?
Jackie
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
