How to Rent out Your House
Renting out your home for the first or 100th time can be daunting. Where do you post your property to get the most visibility as possible? What do you set your rental price to? What content do you put in your rental ad? How should you answer the leads? If you are looking to rent out your house for the most profit to the best tenant, here are 4 tips to help you with the process.
Where do you post your rental property to get the most visibility as possible?
Google coined the term “Zero Moment of Truth” which refers to the research which is conducted by a user online about a product or service before taking any action i.e. searching for houses for rent before leasing a property. In other words, it’s when a prospective resident proactively searches to fulfill a need. In our case, the need is to find a rental that fits their price, safety, social and commuting needs.
According to Google, 9 in 10 renters start their rental search online and perform multiple local searches that send them to multiple rental websites before they make a decision on which properties they want to inquire more about. With device proliferation and mobile friendly designed sites, this has made it even easier to search for rentals on the mobile web.
Nearly 40% of people search only on a smartphone in an average day as they look to meet immediate needs.
And according to NAR, 89% of real estate searchers use a mobile search engine in the beginning of their research to find the perfect property.
So where should you post or advertise your rental property? Here are the major takeaways.
- Post your rental property online. Sites like rentbits, dashlocal, Trulia, Zillow and other rental websites are a very good start. rentbits makes it easy to post your properties on multiple rental sites including those above.
- Make sure the sites you are posting your rental to are also mobile friendly.
- Include multiple photos of the property. Photos of the neighborhood, the front of the property, the kitchen, living rooms, bathrooms, back yard, rooms and other areas to highlight the properties unique characters.
- What do you set your rental price to?
For landlords, one of the hardest things to do is to figure out what the best price is to set your rental. You don’t want to set it too high and have the property sit on the market and you don’t want to set it too low and have your property leased too quickly when you could have possibly made more money.
There are a variety of rental pricing tools out there. We recommend the following:
rentometer.com – Simply type in your address to get recommended pricing and comps.
Zilpy.com – Get the estimated market rent
What content do you put in your rental ad?
When thinking about your rental ad content, you must first understand that every good rental ad as a specific winning structure. The structure is as follows:
[Headline]
– Opening Statement
– Property Differentiation
– Narrative Description of Features
– Concession or Promotion if Needed
– Call to Action
Lets go through each of these:
[Headline]
Keep your headline short and sweet but make sure you hit on what makes your rental property different from the hundreds of others in your area. Most sites limit the character length of the headline so get creative and to the point.
Example Headline:
Premier Condo in LoDo Denver Walking Distance to Coors Field
Opening Statement
This first sentence should flow with your headline and help answer the renter’s question of why should I read on?
Example Opening Statement:
Come see this luxury high-rise condo that is walking distance from Coors Field and in the heart of restaurant filled Lodo.
Property Differentiation
The next sentence should call out the unique features and characteristics of your property. It can be one or two sentences long but no more.
Example Property Differentiation:
This unique open floor plan and breathtaking panoramic views of downtown Denver will allow you to show off your home to your friends. Who knows, you may even make them jealous.
Narrative Description of Features
When writing the description of your rental ad, don’t simply list the features. Tell a story of what your potential new renter will experience living in your home. There are a variety of adjectives and words you can use to help with this process. Here is a list that may help.
Example Narrative Description:
You’ll absolutely love this 1,200 sq ft, 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom luxury condo with an exclusive and 24 hour monitored underground parking space. The vaulted 12 foot ceiling offers generous living space that is ideal for inviting friends over for a glass of wine while simultaneously offering a quaint and quiet atmosphere that allows you to turn on the fireplace for a nice relaxing night with a good book.
Wake up each morning to awe-inspiring sunrises overlooking the city as your slippers gently slide across the maple hardwood floors. Start a fresh cup of coffee in the chef inspired gourmet kitchen with granite counter-tops and stainless steel appliances.
Concession or Promotion if Needed
As rental rate increases begin to slow down and more and more rental inventory hits the market, you may have to offer promotions or concessions within your ad. You should add the concession after the description or in some cases you can add it into a separate promotion section on most rental sites.
Example of concession:
Sign before April 1st and receive the first month rent free.
Call to Action
What do you want the renter to do? Do you want them to set up a showing? Call? Email? Drive by? Whatever you want them to do, add this as your call to action.
Example Call to Action:
This rental will go fast, set up an appointment to tour the apartment now.
How should you answer the leads?
Like any business, online leads that come to you looking to purchase your product or service, it is imperative to respond to these leads in a timely manner. Internal data at RentBits, shows that on average, 50% of all rental leads go unanswered. This is not only lost revenue for property managers, owners and landlords but also an extremely poor service experience for the over 110M renters within the United States who may be looking for a rental property.
Harvard did a study of 2,241 US companies and they wanted to see how long it would take them to respond to a web lead. Here is what they found:
24% of the companies responded to the lead in more than 24 hours. The average response time was 42 hours. On a positive note, 37% of the companies responded to the lead within an hour but a dismal 23% never responded to the lead at all.
They also found that those companies that responded within the hour have a 7x more likely chance of having a meaningful conversion that more likely can result in a sell.
Firms that tried to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead…—and more than 60 times as likely as companies that waited 24 hours or longer.
Takeaway – Respond to all renter leads within the hour to dramatically increase your chances of leasing out your property.
