What Can I Do To Get My Home Rented More Quickly?

The most important thing is to communicate clearly and quickly with your property manager and/or contractors. Whether you are handling much of the make ready repairs yourself, or having a professional handle them, swift communication is key. 

Delays on issues such as arranging a key, timing for photographs, approval for repair quotes, requesting large numbers of quotes, all add up to produce very large lags before making it to market. 

Be realistic with expectations, and understand that savings from excessive quotes or handling repairs yourself are typically wiped out or even eclipsed by lost rental income. All too often we have had owners take a home off the market for several months to handle repairs themselves, save at best a thousand dollars, yet waste huge amounts of personal and rental time while taking 30+ days longer than we would have to get the home to market. In the end the net result is a lot of lost money and time, often significant. 

Understand that most decisions have pros and cons, and consider the total relative picture before making decisions. 

Make sure the home is in good condition. It’s that simple. While almost no rental is in spectacular shape, if a home has a lot of visible issues, your bottom line profit will suffer, your manager will struggle, your tenants will be less likely to care for the place, and all too often the owners of these properties blame everyone else for their problems. 

In real estate investment, as in life, you can rarely if ever have your cake and eat it too. With only a few exceptions, if you save $100 on repair expenses, over the long run you typically lose $100 in revenue. 

It’s not always easy to know which upgrades and renovations are likely to increase your return on investment and not be wasted, but a few items are almost guaranteed to decrease your return. 

Punch list type repairs, shoddy work, half-finished jobs, really rough paint, and severely stained carpet, are all almost guaranteed to increase vacancy, attract terrible tenants, and fetch dramatically lower monthly rates. 

We keep a keen eye on returns on investment, and often opt not to replace carpet in lieu of longer lasting repair investments such as updating an older bathroom, but the line between acceptable and unacceptable is very fine, and typically only those with a wealth of experience can identify it with consistency. Neighborhood, overall value of the home, and time of year can all play a part in the best repair strategy. We never ask our owners to provide a perfect house, but particularly long lasting repairs and all punch list type issues should be handled immediately. 

Otherwise we make recommendations on a case by case basis, but a good rule of thumb is that if you wouldn’t want to deal with those issues in your home, you probably shouldn’t try to pass it off to someone else. (once more our Golden Rule philosophy guides most of our decisions) 

Many owners often ask us if their outdated home is going to be a problem, and our response is always the same. We can work around outdated designs for the most part, but a nearly brand new home that gives the appearance of being neglected, or opting for sloppy contractors / repairs, can be a major problem. Assuming your manager doesn’t have a profit incentive as a result of recommending maintenance / repairs, follow their advice and you will typically rent your home sooner. 

Even if they are only mediocre, their advice is usually helpful as they are in the trenches every day, and receive feedback from dozens of tenants each week. (we do not upcharge on maintenance or receive a management fee on vacant homes, so our incentives are aligned with yours) . 

We created this quick help ticket system so you can get a 2nd opinion easily at any time from some of our most experienced staff

Respond appropriately to renter market conditions only. With little more than small deviations, the market sets the rate for your home. Your monthly payment, interest rate, HOA dues, or any other factors not providing a direct benefit to renters, are distractions that often hurt profitability for landlords. 

Furthermore, the highest quality tenants almost always pay slightly less per month than the market average. While doggedly fighting for the highest possible rate may earn more in revenue early on, typically this results in lower quality tenants, which almost guarantee higher expenses that offset or exceed higher revenue due to wasted time, problem tenant expenses, more repairs / upkeep, and more vacancy. 

See more on this common mistake here… https://movezen360.com/peril-need-get-set-a-price-rental-listing/

We have found for example that whenever we receive several poor quality applications, that is a sure sign the rental is slightly overpriced. Many landlords make the mistake of seeing this as an opportunity to profit, and it is anything but. 

Your best bet is catering to the more financially astute tenants, accepting slightly less on rate, & knowing that on average this works to your advantage in saved expenses, time, headaches, and risk. This is also discussed in depth in the above link. 

While we agree that a minimum rate should be in place, that rate must be within reason, as vacancy itself is a costly expense, and includes other drawbacks such as liability, and surprisingly frequent maintenance issues. 

We take extreme pride in having the highest possible average rental rates while not sacrificing tenant quality. Vacancy costs us a fraction of what it costs the homeowner. We are keenly aware of this, as we ourselves are rental owners. What we can say without a doubt is that we would only reduce the rate, or invest in an upgrade, if we feel it is important enough that we would do so if we owned the home ourselves.