3 Effective Ways to Advertise Your Property For Rent
Whether you're a seasoned landlord or it's your first property, finding a tenant quickly means you'll have cashflow coming in. You may be wondering what's the most effective ways to advertise your property and get the maximum eyeballs.
There are generally 3 ways to advertise your property: referral, owner advertisement and engaging a property agent. These 3 ways work regardless if your property is residential, commercial or industrial.
Tap Into Your Own Network
Getting referral from your friends, family and associates is a free way to advertise your property. But it can be time and effort intensive.
Your phone contact book is a wealth of resource. Look through them and let your friends you have a property available for rent. They may not be looking for a place themselves, but they know someone that does.
Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in his story Chain-Links, introduced the idea of the six degrees of separation. To put it simply, your friends also have a group friends, who also have more friends. And we go through 6 levels of friends, you can reach anyone in the world. So there's a lot of opportunity in your network that you shouldn't overlook.
One-to-one approach can be tedious. Thankfully technology has made it possible to do a one-to-many approach. You craft a generic message and broadcast it to your network. But don't be the guy or girl that constantly sends out self-serving messages. These are annoying and they will ignore your messages.
Do It Yourself
This is a good option if you're well-versed with property advertising. When you do everything yourself, you save costs on agent commissions. Here are some things you need to take note of:
- Excellent understanding of the target audience that will be a good fit for your property
- Know where the target audience get their information when it comes to renting a property
- Understand the different advertising options online, offline or both. And choose the right advertising platform
- Able to take quality photos that would appeal to prospective tenants
- Write a compelling description to attract potential tenants to view your property
If you're just starting out, or don't have the time to manage everything yourself, this won't be your best option.
Let Property Agent Do The Work
You may think that engaging property agents to advertise a property for rental is the easiest option. The agent will take care of everything, so you don't need to do anything, right?
That's not true.
Choosing The Right Agents
There are 2 main problems.
1. Over Exposure
This happens there are too many advertisements on the same property.
Put yourself in the tenant's shoes. What comes to your mind? Either the landlord is desperate or there's something wrong with the property.
Even if the tenant is interested, they will take advantage and negotiate with the agents to get him the best rental rate. As a landlord, this is not in your favour.
2. Agent's Interest Level
Now put yourself in a property agent's shoes. If there are many other agents marketing for the same unit, they're not going to put their full attention on your unit. Because the chances of the property rented out by another agent are much higher as compared to when he is the only agent advertising it.
This may not be an issue if only one agent thinks this way. Unfortunately, most agents think the same way. So when you have too many agents marketing your property, you may end up not getting your property rented out at all.
Managing The Agents
Now that you have selected a handful of agents, you have to inform them what price you are looking to rent your property at. Here's the tricky part. In the minds of all property agents, there are two types of prices: advertised price and closing price.
It's understood that all landlords want to rent out their properties as high a price as possible, while all tenants want to rent at the lowest possible price. So there will almost always be a mismatch on price expectations. This is where the two types of prices emerge.
When you inform an agent the price that you want to rent your property at, the agent may perceive your price as the closing price. The agent, knowing that tenants will almost always want to bargain on price, will markup the rental rate on his advertisement.
On the other hand, another agent may treat your price as the advertised price. When this happens, the agent will advertise your property at the price you mentioned to him. When a prospective tenant comes along, they're going to negotiate the rent. You can be sure that your closing rent will be lower than your expected rent. This isn't good for you either.
More often than not, property agents will treat your price as advertised price by default. That's because when a prospective tenant sees 2 advertisements on the same property, he will always go for the lower price!
From the property agent's perspective, this creates interest to his listing. So it makes sense for him to continue to advertise the property at a lower price. It's important to manage your agents on how they advertise and the price they advertised your property.
Conclusion
You've learned 3 effective methods to advertise your property. Each method has its pros and cons. The best way to decide is to consider how much time you can set aside, your experience level and also your confidence level to get a tenant quickly at your desired rate.
Once you've found a potential tenant, don't forget to use our subscribe to us to screen your tenant.