There’s a lot of competition for tenants
Landlords, you’ve had it easy for the last ten years, now everywhere you look in Charleston there are cranes and they’re building apartments, which are your competition.
What this means is that you have be smarter, you have to be realistic in what you are asking for rent, you have to market your property early, often and everywhere, you might even have a few weeks of vacancy.
Prepare YOUR HOME for showings
Make your house look appealing, clean your home, touch up paint, clean the carpets, pressure wash the siding and porches, take care of the landscaping. All of these are inexpensive to do.
If your home needs updating, this might be the time to do it. All these new condos being built are gorgeous, they are like something you’d see in a designer magazine and it’s what tenants are demanding these days.
To get the most money when you sell your investment property, you’ll need to renovate it anyway, so do things that don’t wear out, like add new countertops , updated lighting is inexpensive. The nicer your place is, the more prospective tenants it will attract and you can pick & choose who you want living in your home.
how to market your house
Take professional photos. They cost $200 and you can reuse them every year. It’s the best $200 you can spend as a landlord, plus it’s tax deductible.
I would even suggest set up a website for your home. This website is built on Squarespace, requires no technical skills and costs $15/month (and it’s our favorite term “tax deductible”). Spend a day building the site or hire a college kid to do it, including photos, FAQs, move in and move out expectations and it will save you doing it every year. If you have more than one rental property, this is a no brainer. You’ll stand out among your competition. You can put the website on a sign outside your property and you’ll get lots of people inquiring.
Don’t just put the data on your ads i.e. “3 bed, 2 bath, 1500sqft home”, that’s boring and every other ad will have that. You want to stand out and give your home some personality, sell the lifestyle that renters could live in your home
“Remodeled, maintenance free home five minutes walk from MUSC, two minutes walk from Charleston’s hottest new restaurant. Yoga studio/gym/dog park close by”
I will guarantee that will get more interest than pure facts.
Put together an FAQ for tenants, anticipate their questions “are dogs allowed, how much is the average electric bill, where can I park, what day is trash day, what are the schools etc”.
This will not only save you answering the same questions repeatedly, but it’ll show that you are a good landlord and tenants factor that in too when deciding where to live.
It’s another reason to put together a website, build it up with all that information and you’re doing something 99.99% of other landlords are not doing.
Where to market your home
Craigslist is the most popular site - It's Craigslist though, so use common sense and don't fall for any scams https://charleston.craigslist.org/search/apa
With Craigslist, I suggest doing three separate ads, all completely different, this will allow you to post one every third day. So Day 1, post ad 1, day 2, post ad 2, day 3, post ad 3. Day 4, renew Ad 1, Day 5, renew ad 6.
Craigslist is smart and will spot if your ads are identical, so change up the wording, the title and the photos.
Neighborhood Facebook Pages : Most neighborhoods have FB groups, it’s free advertising and the people on the page already live there, so they clearly like your neighborhood and will spread the word for you.
Zillow https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_rent/
Hotpads https://hotpads.com
use a property management company
I’m a huge believer in letting experts do what they are good at and you do what you are good at.
So you have one or two rentals and a day job. Property management companies have 500 properties and do this every day. Who is going to do a better job at finding tenants, screening them, moving them in, getting repairs done, negotiating their move out ? You, who might do it once a year, or property managers who do it every day of their lives ?
If you self manage, you have to do all of this :
Do all of the marketing above that I mentioned including posting and reposting on Craigslist, then go meet prospective tenants at the house (25% of whom won’t show up), then take applications, then screen them (do you know how?), then do a pre-move in walk through with them, then chase them down for payments each month, be on call 24/7 for broken AC/toilets etc. When something breaks, you have to find a contractor, be there when they come, wait for them to do the repairs. Now when the tenant moves out, you have to do a move out walk through with them, inevitably argue over the return of the security deposit and once they finally move out, you repeat the whole cycle again.
OR…….
You could hire a property management company who will charge about 7% to do it and you just get a check each month. Remember, that 7% is our favorite term “tax-deductible”, so it’s really more like 4% in hard cash. Do you want to do all the work above to save 4% ? How much time is involved in all of that ? You’ll probably be doing all that work for a McDonalds hourly pay by the time it’s all done. Plus the property management companies have relationships with all the contractors and can get a lower price that you can, so you’ll save money there.
Contact me and I can give the names of some property management companies who I have used in the past.
The bad news is that i cannot help you
Our company does not allow us to handle, market or have anything to do with the leasing of rentals. We are not insured to do it and I can lose my real estate license over it, so apologies in advance. I’m happy to answer general questions and I’ve given a lot of advice on this page, but that’s all I can do.