ECHSign2Finding tenants to fill your rental can be frustrating. Even tougher if your trying to manage you’re rental part time, while working another full time job, have a family, soccer practice, or all of those combined...  Here are a few ways to improve your vacancy rate.

  • Rule number one. Be tenacious.
  • Use Free marketing
  • Use some “almost-free” marketing.
  • Section 8… not as scary as you think.

     

Rule Number one. Be tenacious.

The best advice I’ve ever got about managing rental properties was “Rent like crazy”.  When your property is vacant, you’re throwing money out the window.  The fastest way to end up in the red at the end of the year is letting a property stay vacant. As soon as you can get into your rental after your previous tenant is out, you need to be in there making a punch list of things to clean or fix.  Make the effort to get there the same day or the next day.  Sometimes you can get everything you need done while the water and electricity are still on in the tenant’s name.  That saves you the trouble of getting utilities on if you don’t have a generator and a water tank. Your property should never stay vacant for longer than 1 month.  Your goal should be a 1 to 2 week vacancy, MAX.  When your rental is vacant, the only person you can blame is you, Mr. Landlord.

The second thing you need to do, while you’re there inspecting and making a punch list, is put signs in the yard.  Yard signs don’t cost a lot of money and they generate a ton of calls.

 

Use Free Marketing

There are tons of free online rental listing boards that you can use to market your property.  It takes very little time to create a listing and post it, and after you create it once, you can reuse the same advertising later. This type of marketing isn’t as effective as yard signs, but the more calls you get, and the more showings you can do, the better.  Here are some really good choices that we’ve had good success with in the past:

 

Use some “almost-free” marketing

The old red and white “For Rent” signs do the job pretty well.  But replacing those with cheaper more disposable signs, allows you to put more signs on more street corners, for less money that you can buy the old standard red and whites.  Signs get broken, kicked, mowed over, and throw away very frequently, cheaper the replacement cost the better.  Check out these online sign vendors to create your own yard signs for about $2 to $4 bucks each.  Home Depot will charge you around $30 for single metal frame sign, and they don’t rentsign2 last much longer.

When our rentals go vacant, we put 5 to 10 signs out. 1 or 2 in the front yard, and the rest go on street corners of major streets in the neighborhood around the house.  Even 1/4 to 1/2 mile away is Ok!  Getting rentals filled is really just a numbers game.  The more calls you get, the better your odds of getting it rented faster.

  • TIP #1 – If you have other rentals in the area, put signs in those yards too, even if they’re already rented!  When people call about that particular house, tell them it was already rented but you have another one close by!

 

  • TIP #2 – Make sure you put the Rent Amount ($x,xxx) on the sign. This will help get better qualified leads calling you, and keep the tire kickers from calling just to see what the rent is.

 

Section 8… not as scary as you think. 

When we acquired our first set of rentals, we made a decision not to accept Section 8 tenants. Our decision was main rooted in the fear that the tenant would tend to destroy the house if they were only paying $50 to $100 dollars a month for it. Now after we’ve been through several Section 8 tenants, we realized that we were completely wrong about them.  As anyone who has been through the process knows, Section 8 inspections can be ruthless!  They have high standards starting up front for safety and cleanliness.  If the tenant deviates even in the slightest way, they are risking being kicked out of the program.  In our experiences, tenants tend to keep our rentals very clean and in good working order because they like staying on the gravy train.  Section 8 also requires annual inspections to verify that the tenant is maintaining the high standards as well.

Another good thing about Section 8, they pay on time, every month.  Like clockwork. Getting into the program is pretty easy, and the paper work is not much more than a standard lease would be.  Here’s the workflow:

    1. You advertise your rental and find a tenant
    2. The tenant tells you the type of Section 8 “coupon” they have (3 bed, 2 bath for up to $1150 a month)
    3. After you screen the tenant and approve, you fill out a few short forms and schedule an inspection
      • (Note: All the utilities must be on before the inspection)
    4. The Section 8 Inspector will come to the house and perform the inspection
    5. Don’t worry if you fail, they will give you a punch list to complete, and you can re-schedule another inspection
    6. After passing, you sign the lease with the tenant and send a copy to the Section 8 office
    7. Section 8 will send you a check when the rent is due

The tenant is still responsible for a small amount of the monthly rent, but again, they usually pay on time to avoid breaching the lease agreement.  Material breach of the lease will also get them kicked off the program.