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Well, good morning and welcome, everyone.I am your host, James Orr, and this is another module in the Real Estate Investing Secrets course.Today, we're going to go over the secrets to marketing to find tenants.
So this is part of our series on property management.Today, we're going to go over marketing to find tenants. The next class is going to be screening tenants, how to actually screen them once they've applied.
And then we're going to go over all the property management stuff related to what you do when you have a property and you have a tenant in there.
And then we've got a whole separate class on dealing with all of the issues, all of the challenges that come up when you have tenants in a property, like tenants not paying on time, tenants not following the lease rules.
tenants disputing security deposits, all those types of things will be covered in the special class on overcoming tenant challenges.Then we've got another class on hiring and managing a property manager.
My philosophy is that you should hire a property manager in order to manage your properties.I think that some people will choose to manage their own properties because they think it's easy to do, and I think that that's probably valid for some folks.
But I think once you get to a certain point, one of the appeals of the real estate investing business is that it becomes it can become a very passive business.
And one of the ways to add to that passivity is to hire a property manager who manages your property.And then all you need to do is manage your property manager.So that's what our end goal is.That's where I am.
I don't do my own property management anymore.I haven't probably for probably 15 years.So I'll share with you all the tips I have for managing your own properties, but realize that at this point in time, I'm not managing any of my properties.
And then finally, the last class in the series on property management mastery is on determining rent comps.How do you determine what you should rent your property for?
So that's sort of included in this property management subset of the entire series we're doing for real estate investing secrets.So today we're just primarily focusing on the marketing to find tenants.That's what we're going to go over today.So,
When you're thinking about renting your property, I think it's critically important for you to remember that you are loaning somebody a usually multi-hundred thousand dollar asset.
If you've got a $400,000 property, you are really loaning them $400,000. When you rent your home to somebody, you're loaning them a $400,000 asset or whatever the price of your property is.
So if you remember that as you look for and screen tenants, I think that changes your perspective.
It's not just that you're giving them something and they're going to pay you a thousand, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, whatever it is per month in rent on your property.
I think if you realize that, Hey, listen, I am loaning you this $250,000, $400,000, $500,000 asset. It's almost like you're making them alone and trusting them with something that is worth $500,000.
And so if you ask yourself mentally the question of what I loan this person, something worth $400,000 that I own, that really is the perspective you should be coming from as you're marketing to find tenants and as you're screening tenants in the next section.
So because honestly, that is what you're doing.I mean, you loan them a $400,000 property.That's what you're doing.You're loaning them $400,000 asset that you own.
Okay, so this is a central premise of my whole property management philosophy, and that is start early.Start marketing for tenants, ideally 90 days prior to your property being vacant.
So if you've got a tenant in your property, you're usually asking them at about the 90 day point, maybe a little bit sooner, maybe a little bit later, but you're asking the current tenants, are you planning on renewing this particular lease?
If not, we need to start marking this property so that we can find a tenant to occupy the property when you move out 90 days from now. And so it forces them to decide, hey, listen, we're going to renew the lease.
And this is what the lease renewal price is.
Or we need to start looking for a property ourselves and get them out of the property so that you can immediately start marketing the property about 90 days out, maybe a little bit, a little bit later than that, but not much later than that in order to get your property marketed and occupied, get a new tenant signed up, get them to give you their first month's rent, the security deposit, everything you need to do in order to get that property occupied with a new tenant.
You want, in my opinion, tenants that are planners.Planners start looking for their next property early.You don't want the type of tenant who a week before they need to move out of their property, that's when they start looking for a property.
You want somebody who is thinking ahead financially.They're the type of people that save money.They're the type of people that save for a rainy day.They're the type of people that are going to have money set aside for emergencies and
You know, what happens if we lose our job and we don't have money for rent?You want the people that are thinking that far ahead.
And one of the ways to do that is you start marketing your property 60 to 90 days prior to the property being vacated by the previous Senate so that you can find someone who is planning ahead and is like, okay, I'm going to be moving in a month or two or three months.
Let me start looking for a property now and find something that I want, put them into that property in your property.That's really what you want to do that. You do not, in my opinion, want to place tenants that need to be in some place immediately.
If someone's like, hey, listen, I'm calling you.Yeah, I need a property right away because I'm being kicked out of my current place.I'm being evicted.My parents are kicking me out.I broke up with my girlfriend and I don't have a place to stay.
You're asking for trouble, right?I mean, you're voluntarily moving into the position where you are accepting subpar, subplanning type tenants.And so you want to get people who are early thinkers, early adopters, early planners that want to do that.
You don't want to get people that are constantly living in a state of emergency of, I've got no place to live.I need a place immediately. I think that becomes something you do as a backup.
If you can't market your property early or if you just acquire a property and there's no way you can start 90 days ahead of time, you're starting right now.
Or if you happen to get an eviction on a property because somebody does get evicted and you've got to place a tenant in there.Yeah, you're going to deal with that at that time.
But if you have a choice, let's not voluntarily take on additional problems.Let's go ahead and find tenants that are planners that think ahead, that are kind of like forward thinking sort of tenants.
The additional reason why we want to start 90 days ahead is it allows you to target your highest possible rents and then drop it if you're not finding a tenant without stress or cost.
So you do all your rent comps, you evaluate what the rent should property, then maybe you go the tiniest bit higher because rent's not an exact number.Unless you're trying to rent out a hundred unit apartment building,
and all of the units are exactly the same with the exact same view on the exact same floor, everything is 100% completely identical, then maybe your rents are pretty close to, you know, like right on because you've got 99 other comps for the one property you're thinking of.
However, overwhelming majority of time, there are small differences.There are small preferences.
Your property is located closer to a public transportation or farther away from a noise source or a smell source or, you know, it's got a nicer view or it's got a better backyard or it has better curb appeal.
There's all sorts of variations that people are willing to pay small premiums for.And so rent is usually a range.And sometimes and by the way, time of year is also another factor.
Like if you're trying to rent something around Thanksgiving or Christmas, very different than trying to rent it in the springtime.
So you want to understand that rent is a range and that the range sometimes it says, you know, Red Cops suggest this property is about whatever it is, $2,000 a month.
However, during the right season to the right person, maybe you're getting $2,200 a month and maybe in the wrong season to the wrong person, maybe it's only worth $1,600 or $1,700 or $1,800 when really it should be about $2,000.
So realize by starting so early, you could say, look, rent's about $2,000 a month, give or take a couple hundred bucks, depending on all these different factors.
Let's go ahead and start at 2,200 or 2,100 or 2,050, whatever you think is reasonable for kind of starting there.And you can put out your marketing.If you get no calls. then maybe your rent is a little bit too high.Drop it $25 or $50 or $100.
Do it for another week.If you don't get any calls then, maybe drop it a little bit.
If you're getting some calls and you're just not finding somebody who is desiring that particular property, it could be that you're competing against much nicer properties for the same price, which is a possibility.
Evaluate your market and do that thing. Or it could be that you're still a little bit too high on your price and you should drop it a little bit to kind of evaluate that.
But if you give yourself 90 days in order to find your next tenant, it gives you this time to start high and then adjust every week or so based on the calls and the type of calls and the interest you're getting based on the ad.
So you can kind of look at it and say, OK, I'm going to drop my rent a little bit if you're not finding the tenant that you need way before you get to like the part where it's going to be vacant.
But ideally, you want to start a little higher so you can maximize rent at the top of the range of rent. You need to also make sure that your property is prepared to rent.
Curb appeal matters, your photos matter, which we're going to go into a lot of detail on that.
But if you maintain your properties while they're currently rented to the current tenant, it'll make it a lot easier when you're trying to market your property, the next property, and also Inevitably this happens, right?
The previous tenant in a lot of cases is going to somehow run into the current tenant coming in and you want them to be able to give you a good review and say, yeah, you take care of the property.You've got maintenance requests.
Yeah, you're responsive that you're a reasonable landlord and that they would love to continue to rent for you, but they've got a different situation.
They're moving out of town, they're buying their own house, whatever the situation while the tenant is currently moving out. And so you want to get a good review from the current tenant moving out of the property.I think that's just prudent.
And so I think maintain the property while the current tenant is in there not only helps you be prepared for when you're marketing the property, trying to find a new tenant, but it also helps you with the other tenant giving you a good review.
Oh, uh, if you can't do this in your market and there's some markets where there may be local ordinances or local restrictions, or maybe the statewide restrictions where they say you can't start 90 days early in those cases, make sure that you account for this.
When you're analyzing your deals, you're probably going to have a slightly increased vacancy than the way that I teach property management and the way that I analyze deals.
And you're probably going to have a little bit lower rent than what I'm suggesting.Cause you don't have the 90 day kind of like flux period in order to start a little bit higher and kind of like get that peak rent.
So when you're analyzing your deals, realize that your probably vacancy is going to be a little bit higher and your rent is going to be a little bit lower and or your rent is going to be a little bit lower.
And so make sure you take that into account during deal analysis.
Also, if you start early, if you're moving out of a nomad property, the nomad strategy is where you buy a property as an owner occupant, you move in, you live there for at least a year, and then you convert that property to a rental as you move out and you buy your next property.
Well, if you're in the property living there while you're starting 90 days in advance to find your next tenant, this gives you a chance to find your next property.
Get that all lined up, plan your timing for like when you're going to close on the property and make sure that you've got everything lined up there too.So the timing for that can be a little bit tricky.
And if you don't think you're going to nail the timing, it's really hard to do perfectly, especially when you're moving out of a property and you're moving into another one.
There's a lot of times the lender is going to need a signed lease on your previous property in order to qualify you for buying the new property because the lease amount counts to offset the income, offset the expenses you have on the mortgage on the current property you're living in.
So realize that you'll have to have a signed lease to do that.And the timing of this never works out perfectly.A lot of times in that first cycle, you're going to get a little bit below the peak of the rent you expect to get.
So just budget that in your deal analysis and say, look, I, you know, cause I had to move very, very quickly and accept the tenant relatively early on.
And I had this deadline to do it because I was qualifying for a property that I'm buying on the, when I'm moving out, I'm going to have a little bit lower rent than I'm going to expect to.Maybe it's a hundred dollars a month.
Maybe it's $200 a month, depending on your price point and kind of what's going on there.So if you say, look, when you analyze your deal, maybe you kind of like put it as an expense of analyzing the next deal you're buying.
You put that in as a rent ready cost. because it's a one-time expense that's associated with acquiring the next property.
And so, if it's $100 a month less, then you can say, look, when I'm doing my deal analysis, I have a $1,200 rent-ready cost for buying the next property because the rent on the previous property, the one that I'm currently living in as a nomad, is a little bit lower than what I would expect to get on the next rent renewal cycle.
So, that's how you deal with that and one of the reasons why we start early whenever possible. So here's just a very quick overview, a 90 day tenant marketing plan.
And not all of these things are gonna apply to everybody, but I wanted to try to give you an idea of like what you're doing and how this kind of all works out.
So 90 days prior to the lease expiration, you're assessing the property to determine how's the curb appeal, anything that needs to be repaired on the property right away, make sure that it's like tip top shape for marketing for the new tenant.
You should be doing this already, but this is where we get to go drive by, make sure that the curb appeal is good.
find any and address any issues right before we start marketing so that the property, we have our best foot forward and we present the property in the best light as we're marketing.Then you're going to analyze your market and rent comps.
We have an entire class on doing that.You're going to get professional photography.I'm going to make a point about this a little bit later in this presentation.
You'll understand why I think it's important for you to, when you first buy the property and you put it into perfect shape, the best shape it can be in before you get a tenant in that property, that's when you send in the professional photographer to get professional photos of your property that you're going to keep as an asset associated with the property over the life of the property.
Sure, if you make major changes to the property and things have changed significantly, yeah, you'll go update some photos there. But for the most part, you're going to do this once.
You're going to have professional photos done, professional lighting, professional camera, professional like filtering and post-production stuff on the photos.
And you're going to be ready to go to have these photos used every time you market the property in the future.So it's a one time investment that you're going to get back over a period of time.
So you want to do professional photography if you haven't already done that.You want to write compelling listing sales copy.This is a sales job.
You are selling someone on why they should rent your property versus all of the other options where they have to live.You need to understand going in that this is salesmanship.
This is salesmanship in writing when you're selling a property through a listing, like a rental listing or something like that.
So make sure that you write compelling sales copy, use artificial intelligence like a chat GPT or whatever the current thing is in order to get assistance with this and then check it to make sure you're not violating fair housing, which we'll talk about here in a minute.
But make sure you write compelling listing sales copy to get someone to want to buy your property, lease it, rent it instead of any of the other options that they have at similar prices.Okay.That's really what you're trying to do.
Which is another reason why we want to use professional photography because you want your photos to look amazing compared to all the other people that think they're saving money by using their iPhone.That's another reason why you want to do it.
Also during this 90 day period, kind of during the thing you're reviewing and you're updating your leases and your paperwork, laws change, things change.You're going to need to make sure that you're on top of all these laws.
Talk to attorneys, talk to other real estate investors about anything that's going on.Make sure you're staying in the loop.
as things happen, but this is where you review and you update all of your leases and your paperwork is before you get to the point where you need it.
You don't want to go in and find an attorney who's like, you know, six weeks back and you don't quite have all the stuff when you need it.
So you want to go make sure you reviewed your lease, make any updates or changes of things that have happened, things that you want to improve in your thing.Remember that 1% better concept.You want to really focus in on that.
So make your things 1% better, review them, update them with any of the more recent laws or changes or anything that you had some problems with and go ahead and update that while you're starting to do the marketing.
You want to also set up your tenant screening process, make sure that you're able to run credit checks and background checks and do all the different things you're going to do for as part of your tenant screening.
So make sure that's all set up and you've got your process in place.
And then if you're going to do open houses, if the property is vacant or especially if you're doing like, you know, like a tenant buyer lease option type of deal where someone's going to come in and buy the house, you want to prepare for your open houses.
In most cases, if you've got a tenant in your property, you're not going to do open houses. And then list all your property, list your property on all the different for rent websites, all the different rental websites.
And that's what you're going to primarily do.Then as time moves on, like in the middle of this, like 90 day process, you're going to continue to list or relist your property and rental sites.
If they expire and you need to renew them to need to change your rents, if you need to do all that stuff, you're going to continue to tweak that.You're going to adjust. in most cases, it means dropping your rent based on responses.
In some really rare cases, you put a property out and you get an overwhelming number of responses at that price.You're like, wait a minute, I may be a little bit low.Let me bump my price up.
But it's almost always the other way where you start a little bit too high and you're not getting quite as many as you want.And so you drop the price a little bit based on the number of responses and the inquiries you're getting on a thing.
And then you're screening tenants during this time. and check your local laws, but in most markets, the first fully qualified person that comes in, you need to accept them.So you need to process your applications as you receive them.
If they meet your written requirements for that person being qualified to rent that property, then it is a, that person is approved.
You extend them the right to rent the property and you're not going and cherry picking the best one because cherry picking the best one may open you up to a fair housing violation where you've
consciously or subconsciously selecting someone based on a fair housing criteria.So you want to go and have written criteria, which we're going to go into in tenant screening.
You want to have written criteria and you're going to select the best one or the first one that qualifies based on your written criteria.OK, so that's screening tenants. And then schedule cleaning repairs for the turn.You're about 60 days out.
Sometimes carpet cleaners, especially during the really busy season, they're going to get booked up.So you want to get on their books for when the lease ends, knowing that, hey, look, they're going to be out of there at noon on this day.
I want you in there that afternoon so that I minimize the time that we have between these turns and get the tenant in there as soon as we can.
So you want to schedule all this stuff now while you're way ahead of the kind of like things that are coming up here. So schedule all cleaning and repairs that need to be done for the turn itself, because sometimes you need to replace carpet.
And so you'll want to line up getting a new carpet ready to be done between the tenants.And so all that stuff that you normally do, this is when you're kind of scheduling it so that it happens right as the property is vacant.
Don't wait for the property vacant to line all this stuff up.That's your reminder. And about 30 days prior to the lease expiration, you're continuing to list or relist on rental sites.
If you haven't found your tenant yet, you're adjusting and dropping the rent based on responses, just like you were before.You're still screening tenants.If you haven't found your tenant, you're scheduling cleaning and repairs for the turn.
If you have any of that, you need to schedule like 30 days in advance.And then once you get your tenant where they've been approved and they're ready to go. You have your lease signing ceremony and orientation to your rental property.
You have a move out inspection with your previous tenant and a move in inspection with your current tenant.You want to make sure you do the cleaning repairs and updates that are required at the turn of the property.And this is also your time to
Take a breather, look back at your process, how it went this particular year and all your different properties that you've got and improve your process.Write down things that, okay, next year, this is what I'm going to do different.
Write down the kind of steps next year.I'm going to improve my ad.I'm going to put this in the ad.I'm going to do this better.Get 1% better with a lot of your processes dealing with.
your tenant marketing so that you continue to improve and you continue to get better and things will kind of compound from there.It's the importance of that thing.
So we're talking about getting 1% better and improving your process at this point in the kind of tenant marketing plan.So that's your kind of 90 day plan of what's going on.Okay. The first tenant with a new purchase.
So if you just bought a property for the first time and you're about to close on it, it can be extremely difficult to start marketing a property that you don't quite own yet.A property that you're under contract to buy, but you don't own it yet.
And maybe there are sellers that are still living in the property and all their stuff is in there. So it's really hard to do marketing, trying to use photos with the seller's stuff.
In most markets, you're going to have, you're going to run into issues if you start using photos of the property and it's including pictures of the seller's personal property there.So it's going to be tricky for you to do marketing of a property.
not saying it can't be done in some really unusual situations, but you need to have the cooperation and the the approval of the written kind of acknowledgement of the seller and probably the seller's real estate agent.
If you're the property is listed for sale, because a lot of times the seller does not own the photos for the property.It is the real estate agent, the seller's listing agent that owns the property, but it's of the seller's stuff.
And so you need both their permissions in order to use those photos in order to do marketing for your property if you're going to do that.And trying to show a property where the seller is still in there is going to be tricky at best.
So in most cases, it's going to be really difficult to near impossible for you to do marketing of a property that is listed for sale where you have it under contract and you're trying to put a tenant in the property.Can it be done?Sure. Is it likely?
Probably not.So just realize that that's going to happen there.In some rare cases, you may be able to market the property you don't quite own yet when it's under contract, but in most cases, you're not going to be able to do that.
Otherwise, realize that you're likely to have, number one, a little bit of vacancy for that first tenant.So go ahead and take that into account when you do your deal analysis, and I'll talk about that here in a second.
And you're likely to get slower, slightly lower rent for that first tenant cycle because you're not going to want to have 90 days where you're starting at the top and kind of working your way down each week in order to find a tenant there.
You're going to want to be able to accept a qualified tenant in the property and you're going to want to do that relatively quickly.
So you're not going to have the luxury of 90 days to do that if you're just closing out a property to kind of get your first tenant.So when you get your first tenant, you're probably going to have a slightly higher vacancy.
and you're probably going to have slightly lower rent.So how do you adjust for that when you're doing your deal analysis?
Well, you adjust for these, in my opinion, in the rent ready costs when you use the world's greatest real estate deal analysis spreadsheet in order to do your deal analysis.
So instead of saying, hey, look, you know, rent is going to be $2,000 a month when this thing's humming along and I have 90 days in order to find a tenant.Now you're like, hey, maybe I'm only going to get 1900 or maybe 1800 or 1850.
or 1950 on this particular property, because I don't want to wait 90 days in order to find a tenant.I want to find the first qualified tenant.
And if that means dropping the rent a little bit and getting someone good in there for that first year or two, then that's what I'm going to do.So maybe you're $100 short.Well, if you're $100 short, that's $1,200 for the year.
So go ahead and put that in a rent ready cost and set it aside in a separate bank account because you know that you're a little bit short on what you're doing there.Don't really have to set aside, but you could in theory.
But go ahead and just think about it as, OK, there's a $1,200 expense. $100 a month in less rent than I'm getting on this particular property.And maybe it's like two months worth of vacancy.The first month, you don't have a mortgage payment.
You have taxes and insurance and maintenance and all that other stuff on the property while it's vacant, but you don't have a mortgage payment the first month that you own a property because the mortgage is collected in arrears.
We'll talk about that in the financing section. So you only really have one mortgage payment if it's vacant for 60 days.
But just realize that that's going to happen, and then you're going to get your tenant in there, and everything's going to be back on cycle.
So you'd adjust that by putting rent-ready expenses for maybe one mortgage payment, some utilities, maybe a little bit of maintenance on the property, and also a little bit below market rent if you want to adjust that, and rent-ready costs in order to correctly calculate what your return on investments are for your analysis of your rental property, knowing that that in first rental cycle, it's going to come in a little short.
Then after you get on your 90-day period, kind of prior to lease expiration marketing plan, you'll be able to kind of do it correctly.
If you want to download a copy of the spreadsheet in advance, we're going to cover during the deal analysis module of this course.
You can go to refp.com forward slash spreadsheet in order to be able to download a copy of the spreadsheet early if you want it that way. Let's talk a little bit about fair housing.
This is not a class on fair housing, although you probably shouldn't take a class on fair housing if you're doing your own property management.
Honestly, even if you're not doing your own property management, it's good to understand what the laws are that are going to guide you in this particular business, this real estate investment business.You need to understand fair housing well.
This is not a class on fair housing, but it is really important.I cannot overstate this enough. Fair housing is the real deal.It has teeth.It'll get you if you don't abide by the rules.
You're not allowed the really basic version of this, and you should not rely on my description of this as like what you're kind of following guidelines wise.You're not allowed.To advertise or make any statement that indicates a limitation.
Or preference based on. race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, or handicap.And there are a lot of really weird, what I would consider to be gray areas to this kind of whole thing.
For example, and you should go study this and verify this independently with your own attorney and stuff.It is my understanding that you should not make part of your selection criteria that someone cannot have a felony.
because HUD has apparently determined that more felonies happen to people of certain races.And so that is now racial discrimination via the felony rule.
So if you say, look, I don't allow convicted felons in my property, now all of a sudden you are discriminating based on race because a larger percentage of certain races are more likely to have committed felonies.
So you gotta be really, really careful here. If you want to go read from the HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development's, the federal website, you can go to the website address here on the screen, refp.info forward slash HUD FH.
FH stands for Fair Housing.That's a short link to the long URL.Just trying to save you some time to have to type it.
or they go to like the NOLO law books, they have a whole section on fair housing on their website, refp.info forward slash N-O-L-O-F-H.And you can kind of become with fair housing laws.
And I will also tell you that certain states and certain markets will have additional fair housing and other just laws and regulations that are stricter than the federal laws for you to follow.
So make sure you understand not just the federal laws, but your local laws as well for doing these. Okay, that's fair housing.So make sure you abide by fair housing.It's really important.
That's another reason why I think if you get to the point where you can, you should hire a professional property manager who is in charge of maintaining that and monitoring that and staying on top of all the fair housing.
And then if they make a mistake, it's on them.They're professionals, they're licensed, they've got insurance, they're ready to handle fair housing stuff if they mess up.
But if you don't, it's all on you and you got to stay on top of this and you got to make sure that you don't slip up.
So make sure that you follow all the rules if you're doing it yourself, or better yet, hire a professional to do it and put a buffer between you to minimize some risk.OK.So do as much of this marketing for your tenants as you can.
I personally believe that quality, your quality of your tenants is going to come from quantity.Generate a number of tenant applications to find one great tenant.
I'd rather see you have really good strict credit, like tenant qualification criteria and generate a hundred leads and have to sort through a very strict criteria rather than you have very loose, very low standards.
And you're like, okay, with like having two people apply and selecting one of the two.
I would much rather see you do quality from quantity, having a lot of people apply for your property and having stricter standards, stricter written standards for screening your tenants and approving them to rent your property.
Most of the time, as far as like doing all the different marketing stuff we're going to discuss here, you probably won't be able to do it all.I realize it's a practical consideration.You're not going to be able to go do all these things.
We'll primarily be focused on direct calls where you kind of are screening tenants and not building a buyer's list.
If you were doing this as a real estate entrepreneur, remember we talked about all the different real estate investing strategies you could do, buy and hold, nomad, house hacking, all those different ones.And one of the ones at the end was
were two of the ones at the end were real estate entrepreneurship, where you're in the business of buying and selling properties, usually with creative financing, and usually doing like lease option tenant buyers, although not always.
And then wholesaling, where you're kind of building a buyers list of people that are interested in acquiring your properties or renting your properties or whatever you're doing there.And so
If you're doing those ones, especially real estate entrepreneurship, you're going to be building a list of people because as you get another property that's coming on, you want to be able to email your list of 10, 20, 100, 500 different people that have inquired about doing a lease option with you or rent to own with you before.
And you want to show them the new property, the new inventory you have, and they can opt out of your list once they found something where they no longer want to be notified.But a lot of folks are going to continue to look.
The one they showed you is not going to be a good fit for them, but they are interested in doing a rent to own or lease option or lease purchase. And so you want to build a buyer's list of people for doing that.
If you're just filling your vacancies for the season at the beginning of the season in the springtime, why are you building a buyer's list?They're probably not going to be looking next year at the same time.
So in most cases, we're not building a separate buyer's list.
However, if you are doing real estate entrepreneurship, offering lease options to tenant buyers, a buyer's list is a really great idea, but we're going to be focused today on marketing in order to do just your list of properties that you're going to be filling of the properties you've got.
So now. I have more of a brute force kind of personality than I do have elegant solutions.There are certain people that they're like, look, you know, I'm going to go and analyze these.
And, you know, if I just do this one thing and I do it really, really well, that's sort of my elegant solution.I don't need to really kind of do all this stuff.
I am a do as many things as I possibly can, improve them over time, get better at them, but definitely do brute force as many things as I can.I have more of like a I'll outwork you mentality.
And I would encourage you to adopt a similar thing, because I think the more different things you do, the more more kind of like quantity of people coming in and the more quality you're going to get by looking at a large number of tenants coming in that you can screen.
And I think there's a there's a different.There's a different competence that comes with knowing that you've got
10 other applications to go through after the current one, if you have really good, very well thought out, very well, I don't know, established written tenant screening criteria.
So I would prefer you have an I'll outwork you mentality, knowing that you'll do more than other people will in order to find good quality tenants when you're doing your marketing. Okay.
So this concept though, it comes from this idea of Pareto's principle.
Vilfredo Pareto was a Italian economist and he recognized that about 80% of the keys were coming from about 20% of the peapods and about 80% of the wealth was held by about 20% of the population where he lived.
He was an Italian economist, I forget the year, but like 500 years ago or so plus, plus or minus, I think. Anyway, he basically was an old school economist, and this is what he came up with, this kind of concept of 80-20.
80% of your results will come from 20% of your work.So if I had to handicap this, if I only could do one or two or three different types of marketing methods in order to fill my properties, what would I do?
I think if I could only do one, I probably would do Zillow Rental Manager. That's probably the number one go-to in my opinion right now, although test it in your marketplace and see if that's true for you.
If I could only do two, I probably would do Zillow and Craigslist.And if I could only do three, I would do Zillow, Craigslist and the sign in the yard.
Now, other people would argue, I don't know, James, you're forgetting all about Facebook marketplace and you know, all this other stuff.
Use whatever you think are your top three, if you're only going to do three, but I would rather see you do all the different places that you possibly can in order to do your marketing.
And that's really what this concept of Pareto's principle or the 80 20 rules about. you're going to see about 80% of your results come from only about 20% of the effort that you put in at work.
There's going to be a lot of other things that you do that's going to get you like onesies, twosies, a little bit of a benefit, but it's not going to be the majority of results.
I think the majority of results are going to come from these three things that you do in order to market your property. Here are the top rental marketing sites.And as soon as I publish this, it's probably outdated.
So you're going to want to go find out whatever the current top rental marketing sites are.And I will also tell you that there's probably some local variation.You may have a local website that is just dominated the local rental market.
We used to have one here in Northern Colorado, although it's kind of since gone defunct.
But there used to be a time when, you know, if you didn't mention this additional resource we have in order to do the marketing on your properties, you'd be missing out on a major resource for that.And so your market may have like a local resource.
Your market also may have you may find that Zillow works a lot better in your market or Zillow doesn't work at all in your market and Craigslist works much better.So you got to understand your local marketplace a little bit.
But of the ones that I think you should at least consider, I'm going to name them out.But realize, do your own research, especially if you're listening to this.
It's March, I forget what the date is, late March of twenty twenty four when I record this.
But if you're listening to this any time after that, even let's do it right away, then realize that you should probably go check and see if there's not a new big player on the marketplace or something has shifted.So here's the ones as of right now.
But realize these can change. Number one, Zillow Rental Manager.Just look up Zillow Rental Manager on Google and you can find it that way.That's like your big one.It's one of your big dogs for kind of like listing a property for rent.
Apartments.com, Realtor.com, Frankslist.com, Facebook Marketplace, Rent.com, Hotpads.com.And in addition, if you're doing short term rentals, probably probably in Stata.
But if you're doing short-term rentals, Airbnb and VRBO are two big short-term rental type places on there.But I think the other ones are mostly if you're doing like mid to long-term rentals.
And for the short-term rentals, you're probably looking at more of those kind of specialty sites for doing that.Okay.
When you push, when you put your website, when you put your rental on one of these kind of like marketing websites, like, you know, Zillow Rental Manager, they may ask you if you want to syndicate your listing out to other platforms.
Syndication is when a platform like Zillow Rental Manager allows you to send your ad or your listing to other websites or other ad platforms for free. Sometimes they'll charge, but most of the time it's, hey, look, you're already listed here.
We'll send it out to these other three websites, you know, as just part of the service.Would you like to do that?And I think in general, syndicating your listings to maximize exposure makes a lot of sense.I think that you should do that.
It's getting a lot better.But there was a time where.
Sometimes these websites would syndicate your listing or your property out to another website, and then it was impossible to get that listing to come down or it was impossible to get that listing updated or fixed or something like that.
I think it's improved dramatically, but just realize that that could potentially be a small issue. but I wouldn't worry about it.I would probably syndicate out my stuff to as many places as I can.
It's that kind of like outwork you, brute force mentality of getting your marketing out there to as many places as you can, getting as many people inquiring about your property as possible, and then selecting quality people are the people that are applying.
Spy on your competitors. So when you're about to go do your marketing, one of the best things you could do is go look at the ads that others are running around you.
Now you shouldn't be doing this anyway, when you determine your fair market rent, you're going to want to look up properties and realize, okay, this is a red cop.Is this similar enough to my property?
And when you're doing that, you're going to be reading through their listing to see how it compares to yours and what they're using and like good little marketing catchphrases they're using.
They're like, oh, I really liked the way they described that.Let me go get an open up a notepad or open up a notion page or something.
and write down little snippets that you plan on using, kind of borrowing from other people that they're doing that you like to do.
And so you should be doing this anyway when you're determining your fair market rent, but deliberately go back through and look at the ads other peoples are running around you to see what you're competing against and understand what they're doing.
You want to know if a look, there are seven other properties that are like identical to mine, maybe even in the same neighborhood.And they're all $50 a month, less than what mine is.Well, how am I going to stand out?
How am I going to make mine do better than theirs?
And you want to go compare their ads and see, and try to do better, try to get better pictures, try to get better descriptions, try to sell it more, try to make it seem like yours is better than the other one.
Even though, you know, that they're basically the same model by the same builder built for the same year in the same neighborhood at the same time for rent. OK, so you've got to understand how to make your stand out.
What is normal in your marketplace?What is everybody doing that you probably shouldn't as a standard?See what you like and use that.Go pull out key phrases like, oh, I really like the way that they describe the view or the kitchen or whatever it is.
Let me go use that or do a variation of that.No, don't copy and add word for word, but creatively borrow and say, look, you know, I really like that.They're describing it this way and then describe it that way in your own words.
See what you don't like, see what would be a turnoff for tenants.If you put yourself in tenant eyes, where you're going to look and you're trying to rent the property at this price point, what would you pick?
Would you pick your property or would you pick the other ones?Why didn't you choose these other properties?What about them didn't you like?Well, don't do that yourself.See what you don't like and avoid that.
and always be sure to avoid fair housing violations.Just because someone else is doing it doesn't mean it complies with fair housing.Someone saying a great family home is a violation of fair housing, you should not use that. Don't do it.
Understand fair housing, understand the laws, and fair housing has teeth.Anyone can file a complaint.
If they think you violated fair housing and you've discriminated against them because it's whatever it is, they can just anonymously submit their kind of like,
their violation report to Fair Housing and it's a government entity with essentially unlimited resources.It's not really unlimited resources, but it's unlimited to you.
Unlimited resources to go and investigate and to collect fees, fines from you for violating Fair Housing.So you really want to follow these rules.Don't mess this up.Okay.
So just because someone else is doing it doesn't mean you can say the same thing.Make sure you understand what Fair Housing rules are and don't say anything that's going to violate it.Okay. Next thing, what do you include in your ad?
First of all, I think you should maximize the number and the quality of photos that you use.You want to include the number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, the square footage of the property.
If you've got a garage or carport or other applicable parking structure or access, you want to include information on that, what the rental amount is, and then consider including the deposit amount in some cases.
We're talking about that here in a little bit.We talk about quantity versus quality. contact info, info, make sure you include your contact information, include your local phone number.
If you've got one, um, if you don't have a local phone number, especially if you're kind of like renting from out of state, I think it adds some credibility to your ad.
You're likely to boost your response rate a tiny bit, not like a massive amount, but a tiny bit.
If you go get like a local Google voice or local telephone number from one of these services that do it, um, that has a local area, area, area in the code. for the particular property so that you're not having them call out of the area.
They're wondering, hey, is this like an absentee landlord?I think there are certain groups of tenants who are trying to take advantage of landlords where they are targeting.
They're looking for out of the area landlords to try to do some type of weird scam or something.So I think you're going to reduce your number of calls on that, too, if you have a local number and then use your email address.
If you use Craigslist by chance, you could use like the anonymous email address to help reduce spam, but just kind of use whatever you need to.Maybe you have professional email address set up, but it's not required in most cases.
All right, photos make a huge difference when you're doing your marketing to find a tenant in your property.You want to maximize the quantity of photos you use and you want to make sure that they are of the highest quality.
I'm going to show you examples of this, and there's probably ones that are slightly better and slightly less egregious, but I think it makes a huge difference having professional photos versus trying to take your photos as an amateur with the wrong lens, you know, just using your your kind of like even the new cameras, just your new camera and the new.
You know, the kind of like photos that you can get from those.They might look good, but if you have a professional, you can see the difference.They use special lenses.They do post-production work to make sure that they look great.
I'll show you some examples of photos here, examples of a home with the same exact floor plans, built by the same builder.One was taken by an amateur photographer.One was taken by a professional photographer.
And I want you to tell me if you can notice the difference here. I don't think you should try to become an expert at all these little things.
I think you should try to outsource the things that a professional could do better for you, in some cases cheaper than you can.
And I think you should become an expert at the more important, more valuable skills like finding deals, financing deals, structuring deals, analyzing deals that are harder to outsource.
You don't want to be stepping over the dollars to pick up the dimes.And I think that's what trying to take your own photos is like doing.You try to become good at taking photos when that's not really a valuable skill that you want to have.
Unless you're in the photo business, that's a skill you're going to use in your career.I think that's a skill that you could say, you know, for about a couple hundred bucks, I can have someone else do this.It's going to be professional.
I'm going to use them for the life of the property for all the time that I own it.And so it's a good investment, which you'll probably make back in the first year.
So I think you do the photos and between getting a slightly higher rent and slightly lower vacancy because you're going to attract more tenants with better quality tenants from people being able to look at your better photos, I think you're going to make up that $200 cost in the first year.
And then after that, it's just the bonus return on investment that you're getting over the life of the property and the times that you use that over and over again. It's not like you're doing photos every time you're doing this.
You do them once when the property looks amazing right after you buy it.It's all vacant.You get it all fixed up.It's ready to go.Then you send a professional photographer in on a nice sunny day, make sure it's bright and everything looks perfect.
And then you've got photos for that property forever.That's the way to do it, in my opinion.So here are some examples of a pro versus amateur photos. I think you could tell the difference between which one's which.
But these are literally the photos that were used to market this property.And it's the same model of the property.I don't know if it's the same exact neighborhood, but it's probably really, really close.
This builder built a lot of properties around me.And this is a person amateur kind of taking the photos versus and this is like legit.This is what the person was using.
And then here are professional photos that we had done for the property because we bought one as a rental.So here's another example. professional one versus the one where the amateur took them.
Kind of see the difference there if you want to pause the video.There's another one of the back view of the property.You can ignore the fact that one had backyard landscaping, the other one didn't.
But just look at the quality of the photo, the framing of it, the way the image is set up.Here's another one of the kitchen. You could see the difference there.Ignore that one is staged.That's not what we're looking at.
We're looking at just the quality, the lighting, the way that, you know, the other guy was lazy.He didn't put the lights on, you know, he didn't have blinds on the property.
So it's a little bit bright in there, but there are no lights on the property at all.And the kind of angle is a little bit janky, but this other one's got like a fisheye lens.So it's got a good kind of zoom out, makes it look really bright.
He's got all the lights turned on.He's got the blinds open showing that there are blinds, but it's letting the sunlight in.I just think it looks a lot better when you do the professional one versus the, uh,
amateur one.Here's another example.Another example.Just see so much more.The bathrooms don't look tiny.Here's another example.Here's an example of a laundry room.Here's another example.
So I think you could see at this point, I'm just going through some different examples of how this is all laid out and just the differences between professional photos.So I think it's worth paying a small premium to get that done, get it done right.
Then you can use them forever.Once you do that.Okay.Do you want. fewer, but more qualified people calling you, tenants, prospective tenants calling you, or do you want a higher quantity of people?
You can change what is said in your ads in order to cater to your preference.You could generate a lot more calls with more generic ads and then sift and sort or generate fewer, more qualified calls by having people opt themselves out ahead of time.
For example, put in that you require first month's rent, last month's rent and security deposit would decrease the number of calls, but would increase the quality of the people calling in.
Because someone reading that saying, look, I require first month's rent, last month's rent and a security deposit.Maybe I don't have that.So I'm probably not even going to call in that ad.
Or it's someone who didn't read the ad and they call you anyway, which is going to happen no matter what.But I think you're going to find that overall the quality of the people calling are going to be a little bit better.
Or say something like you must make X dollars per month to qualify.That would decrease the calls, but increase the quality of the people that are calling you.
And you can practice more and perfect your tenant screening process by having more people call that are unqualified to work on your salesmanship.
Because not only is this marketing, the ads you use, the writing you use, kind of salesmanship, sales copy, but also your ability to sell on the phone and sell in person.This is a sales job.
If you're not good at sales, you should probably not be doing your own property management.
You should outsource it to someone who's qualified at being able to sell on a phone, sell your listing, sell why they should rent there, but also qualify them to make sure they're qualified to do it, and then sell them when they get to the property as to why they should rent your property versus everyone else.
This is sales.You are selling the tenant your property. Call to action.So in all of your ads, you want to tell them what you want them to do next.A very clear call to action.Call today to schedule a showing, as one example.
Visit website for more info.Call 24-hour recorded information line for more info. What do you want them to do?What's the next step?Someone sees your ad.What do you want them to do next?Once they call you, what do you want them to do next?
Once they meet you at the property, what do you want them to do next?You want to understand what the next step is.This is part of salesmanship.What the next step is once they get to that stage with you.
clarity, make sure that you tell them what you want it to do.
If you're going to use a 24 hour recorded information line or video or website, use it to pre-screen callers and give out additional basic information about your tenant criteria and the property.
A lot of times we're going to go and record a video tour of the property.A lot of times they'll call in, we'll get some very basic information.It'll be like, it sounds like it's going to be a good property for you.
Can I send you over a video of the property?You can take a look at it.And then once you've seen the video, just give me a call back.We can discuss schedule and time for the showing.That's one way to pre-screen tenants.
Okay, so you can go ahead and do that as your process.
You're still gonna get calls asking basic info like, you know, how many bedrooms does the property have when it's clearly on the website, how many bedrooms it has, but it may reduce some of that a little bit, okay? Yard signs.
So yard sign is probably one of the more important things to do.You'll notice it's very high on my list of things that I think are important.If your yard sign has a flyer box, make sure you add flyers to the flyer box.
If you're using some type of like 24-hour recording information line, or someone calls in and they can get like, you know, one minute or two minutes spiel about the property and your kind of process and all that other stuff, you can go ahead and put that on there, or put your phone number on there, put your website on there if it's got additional information, or put your email address on the sign.
double check it before you put your sign out.
I've heard horror stories where people have put out a wrong telephone number because they were using an 800 number and they don't know it really well and they misspelled the miss kind of transposed the numbers or they put out a number that's no longer active.
They had it from the previous time and the person who they hired to put their sign out took the wrong sign out of the garage.So make sure you check it, make sure that the signs are right before you put your sign out.
Place your yard sign in front of the yard so that you can read it as you approach the property.You don't want it so that you can read the property, read the sign directly as you're facing the property.
You want it so that the sign is readable as you drive by.So point it in the direction of the road so that someone passing by can read it.When they look at it head on, it's probably going to be like looking at the end of it where you can't read it.
If you don't put the sign where, you know, people drive by don't know what the sign is until they stop in front of the property and look directly to the right or the left.You want the sign readable as they drive past it.OK.
Occasionally, a property will warrant having two signs, for example, a property on a corner lot, but one on each road driving by.So that's in the right direction.Or if it's an unusually shaped lot, sometimes they'll require an additional sign there.
Save a photo of what you use in your swipe file for the property. It's the best practice for you to keep all of your marketing materials for your property all in one spot so that next year you don't restart from zero.
You know exactly what you wrote in your ad because you saved a copy of it.
You took an image or a screenshot or you copy and save the text into a text file or into a Notion document or something like that so that you have all your stuff in one spot and you can improve this over time, getting one percent better and kind of recurring concept here of like improving as we go here and making your life easier.
so that you're not starting over from zero.You have copies of your ads.You have copies of, you know, your lease that you used last year.
You have copies of, you know, your for rent sign that you use and postcards and, you know, the ads you, uh, you know, the, the script that you use for tenants and the video you have for like the video tour.
Keep all this stuff together, organized in one spot, and then you can review it for next year, improve on anything you need to, and be ready to go. Consider leveraging your other properties by putting signs in those yards too.
I think that's an advanced strategy that most of you will choose not to use.All right.What info should you have in your yard sign?
Your contact, your contact info, your phone, your email, your website, the rent of the property, the beds, baths and garage.
So if it's a three bed, two bath, two car garage, it'd be a three slash two slash two, um, security deposits on the property, you know, how much you're collecting for security deposit, the address of the property, and then the other really key features, you know, like that this thing is at, it's like, uh, you know, huge yard.
something like that if it's applicable to you.Okay.Directional signs.
So most people underdo directional signs, but if you're really trying to market your property hard, and again, this is like the 80-20 principle where most of you are going to choose just to ignore me on this one, but if you do it, I think you're going to find that you're going to get some good results.
So put a directional sign on the corners leading to your particular property from the major streets that go by.
you know, somebody commuting to work an hour each way, they may not realize that there's a property for rent, you know, just down the street here that they could be in half or by a third.
And so, you know, put these directional signs showing this here that may be on there one day when they're like, I'm done with this mute.They drive by, look at it and call on your.
You use the 24 hour recorded message line, phone number, website or email on your signs and double check all that before you put your sign up, save a photo of what you use in your swipe file for this property so that you know what you use.
YouTube checklist and put your video of your tour on YouTube or something like that.Create a video tour of your rental, post it to YouTube.Do this when your property is in great showing condition.
Don't do it when the current tenant's stuff is all in there and everything's dark and they've got it set up for sleeping.You want to do it when it's vacant.Do it once right the first time, get it there.
Maybe not talk about what the rent is so that the video is going to be ready to go for the next time you do it.So that's really the ideal time to do it.
If you're using a 24 hour recorded message line, phone number, website, or email on your video, double check that before putting your video live or starting to link to it to make sure that all your stuff is up to date and then save a copy of your video and your site file so that you have it in case you need to edit it or change an audio or change the telephone number, change the rent amount or whatever you're doing on there.
You can kind of do it that way. Rent flyers.So create a flyer for rent that you'll use.
You can search online for real estate agent templates or lender templates, especially if you're doing some type of lease option one or title companies will have the ability for you to be able to get a flyer template from them or Fiverr or Zillow or any of these services that create one.
You can find one online to do that.Go ahead and create one.If you're using a 24 hour recorded message line, all that other stuff, make sure you check all those numbers before you start using your flyer and start printing out copies.
And here's how you use it for marketing.Usually you're going to print out about 70 to a hundred of these things, depending on how many you plan to deliver to neighbors and local bulletin boards.
Printing a hundred flyers might cost you 50 to a hundred bucks, maybe a little bit more, depending on what market you're in.For single-sided black and white, it might be 10 bucks.
Double-check the contact info again, just before printing, because you don't want to spend this money and find out that the telephone number is wrong and then either be tempted to go hand correct all the telephone numbers or
just paying the money to print it again.So if you're trying to maximize price, you may be printing more than one batch because you're going to be coming down on price on rent as you do this.
This is especially a good strategy if you're doing like lease option.
If you're a real estate entrepreneur and you're trying to find a tenant buyer, blanketing the neighborhood right around your property with these flyers offering a rent to own property is a great strategy.
Take a copy of the flyer on the inside window of the property so that when someone comes up to it or if they see the sign in the yard and they go knock on the door or they want to take a peek in the window because they think it's vacant, they can see a copy of the flyer.
It might be harder to do this if you have a tenant in there, but if it's vacant, that's a great strategy to do.If it's a two-sided flyer, make sure you tape both sides.So sometimes we'll put more information about the property on the back.
Make sure you tape the front and then tape one where you can see the back on the other side in the front window for the door.A lot of times is where we'll put it.
If the property is vacant, place 20 copies of the flyer inside the property in the kitchen, just in case someone steals all the flyers from your box outside.You want to put some replacements in there.
Just a really convenient tip for saving you some time.And then obviously hide another 20 copies in a cabinet somewhere else, just in case someone steals the other supply.I'm telling you this because it's happened to me.
So, you know, just got to do whatever you need to do. If you're outside the flyer box, add flyers to the flyer box outside.Also post these on community bulletin boards.
Some people are going to decide to go do this at the rec center and their, their local church or whatever they're doing there.So you can put these in different spots in order to let people know you've got a property for rent.
Save a copy of it in your swipe file so you can easily edit it for next year.
And then you could reuse this flyer on some ads like Craigslist or on Facebook, just convert it to an image, save it as an image, and then you'll be able to use it as an image ad on some of these different things. postcards to neighbors.
So instead of delivering flyers to the neighbors, you could decide, say, look, I'm not going out there in the heat and delivering all these things hand to hand.
I can go ahead and create a postcard that says rent to own or lease option or for rent, if I'm really just doing it for rent, although most of the time we're not using this just for rent, but sometimes you could.
And you're doing postcards to the neighbors right around the property, you can get a list of
addresses from the title company or online from like a list source company in order to find out the 100 or 200 nearest neighbors to a particular property and then do a little postcard and send it out for the different properties there.
It could be done in a set of flyers to let people know about the rental or about the lease, rental type property.Birds of a feather flock together.So
you are likely to find other people like the people that live in that neighborhood by advertising the property that is for rent or rent to own to people in that neighborhood.
Maybe someone who's renting wants to live in that property, in that neighborhood permanently, and they'd be interested in your rent to own as an example.Or they work with other people at the same job, and so they make the same money.
They could afford the same type of housing.And so those are likely to be your people that refer you, their friends and family who are interested in moving in their neighborhood and being neighbors to them.
You know, the postcard idea is just a slightly expanded classified ad.So if you think about writing it, it should write like a classified ad, but content on a postcard.
And then we often use this with like a 24 hour recorded information line or websites or their phone number in order for them to get more information to do that.Of course, check all your contact information before you go put this out.
You don't want to send out 300 postcards and find out that you have the wrong telephone number on there. And then, of course, save a copy of your swipe file.
And I would recommend both saving a copy digitally to see what you actually sent out and then save the text.So it's easy for you to kind of make changes when you do this in the future or to reuse it in other spots. Facebook.
So Facebook posts and local real estate related groups and also Facebook marketplace in order to advertise your property for rent.You can also do Facebook ads if you wanted to, to target people demographically.
Hey, look, you got to earn at least this much money in order to be able to be qualified to do this.
So you could set a demographic, like income-based qualification to people within whatever it is, five miles of your property or 10 miles or whatever it is.Do geographical and demographic like, and you also need to earn the income of this.
in order to be able to qualify it.I'm not going to show you the ad otherwise to save on your money in order to find your tenant or tenant buyer candidates for these types of properties.Essentially classify that.
Use your 24 hour recorded information line or websites, make sure you check those and then save a copy of the text and the image of what you actually use so that you can do improvements over time in your swipe file.That should just be a theme, right?
Like if I'm going to say this every time, do the stuff, save it to your swipe file, make sure you have it so we can improve over time. In some markets, by the way, you'll be able to list your property in the MLS in the for rent section.
Not all markets have this.For example, my markets like hardly ever use it all.
But if you have a market where it's popular to list properties for rent, especially markets where real estate agents can be paid to go, you know, show tenants properties, they paid a fee in order to put a tenant property.
Maybe you want to choose to market your property inside the MLS and offer to do that.Not all markets will allow you to do that.And so if you can do it, consider doing it and save a copy of what you use for the next time as well.
Open houses, except in really unusual situations, we don't usually hold open houses with tenant-occupied properties.It's just not something we do.
However, especially if you're marketing to tenant buyers and there's a vacant property, then consider holding an open house because that's really a property for sale.
And open houses can be really effective ways for you to find, build your buyers list if you're a real estate entrepreneur, and also sell that particular property could be a very effective way to do it. and a buyer's list.
So some nomads will also be doing like lease option exits as a way to speed up nomad.
And if you have a buyer's list, like if you're doing real estate entrepreneurship and you're building a buyer's list of people to buy other properties that you're finding, then use this to build your buyer's list.
Use all the marketing that we're doing.Anytime someone comes in, add them to your buyer's list or ask them if you want to add them, they want to be added to your buyer's list.And then you can notify them every time you have new property.
Imagine not having to do marketing. starting with 100, or 200, or 300, or 500, or 1,000 people on your list already, when you get a new property in, you're like, hey, I'm not sure if I want to buy this one.
Let me see if I have someone interested, where you send out an email to everybody, the 500 people on your email list say, hey, I've got this property coming on, let me know if you'd be interested.
You'd send some generic photos and generic stats on it, maybe not the exact address.And if you see it, people will respond.And maybe you're able to buy one only because you know that you've got a buyer lined up in advance.
That's one of the advantages of having a buyer's list.If you're just doing regular rentals though, and you're going to have a changing renter pool every season, probably not needing to build a buyer's listed.
But once you have your buyers list, if you're going to do like more real estate entrepreneurship, or you're doing more lease option exits for like Nomad as an example, then doing email blasts or voice blasts or text blasts to your list could be a very effective way to do that.
In conclusion, So we just covered all the different stuff for marketing to find tenants.The secrets of marketing to find tenants.Number one tip in conclusion, start early.Ideally 90 days prior to your current tenant's lease expiring.
I know there are gonna be situations where that's not practical.Some markets it may be impossible for you to do, so adjust for that.
But ideally that's what you wanna be doing in order to minimize your vacancy, maximize the rent you're getting, and give yourself an opportunity to really do this right.
Do as much marketing as you possibly can, even though the 80-20 Pareto principle rule is in effect and 80% of your results are going to come from 20% of your efforts.
We know this going in, but try to do as much as you can in order to maximize the marketing impact you have and to kind of build your list if you're doing real estate entrepreneurship and you're building your buyers list.
Use professional photos when possible.I can't drive that on one. You're trying to compete against other people in the marketplace, trying to get slightly higher rent than they're getting.
You're still trying to get slightly higher quality tenant, trying to reduce your vacancy.One of the major ways to do that is to show really amazing photos of your property that is appealing and want people to move in.
Don't show crap because you're going to attract crap. And then finally be aware of fair housing and local laws and comply with them.Please don't make that mistake.Ideally have a professional come in and do this for you so that they're responsible.
They're in charge of doing that.But if you're going to do it yourself and try to save a little bit of money, cannot like. ignore the fair housing rules and just think, Oh, I'll kind of just like wing that.
No, you need to become a professional, understand fair housing and how those rules apply to what you're doing, what you can say, what you can ask questions about on the phone and all your screening and stuff like that.It's really important.
So don't overlook that.All right.That's all I got for you.Hopefully you enjoyed this special class on the secrets of marketing defined tenants. This is module three of 46, I believe.
And there's like six of them in the kind of like a property management mastery sub section, if you kind of want to think about it that way.So stay tuned for the rest of these.This has been James Soar.
Have a great day, everybody.Bye bye for now.With home prices up, mortgage interest rates up and rents up, but not quite enough to counteract the higher prices and interest rates. Cash flow on rental properties in Centennial is harder than ever.
Book a call with the real estate financial planner to apply our proprietary 88 strategies to improve cash flow on your rentals.See the show notes for a link to schedule your call and improve your cash flow today.
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