Landlord Tips – Placing Ads

When I first started in the business, you would place an ad in your local newspaper, with a whole three minuscule lines to work with, you got good at abbreviations and putting as much information as possible in your tiny, expensive ad.

Now there’s a plethora of free internet ad options, and prospective tenants don’t want to waste their time. They want lots of information and especially pictures. If you don’t have pictures, I can guarantee you that people will call or email you just to ask for pictures. That’s if you’re lucky and people even look at your picture-less ads.

I highly recommend that you set up an email just for your properties. If you have a personal email, I would set up a separate account because of the scum of the universe – SPAMMERS. Once your private email is exposed in internet ads, you will start getting all kinds of offers for Viagra, and rich christian widows with cancer will pray and discover that you are the only person who they trust to help them distribute their millions to orphans.

Foreign bankers will contact you to assist them. UPS has undelivered packages for you and your bank wants you to update your banking password. These horrible SPAMMERS will never forget your email address. They will even sell your email address to other SPAMMERS and you will forever get the same delightful messages hundreds of times per day. You want to hear from your family, friends and legitimate businesses without having to deal with email pollution.

There are certain items I think are absolutely essential to put into the advertising for the property. My thoughts are the more information the better. This prevents everyone from wasting their time – this includes you. There’s nothing more frustrating then going to a property, showing it, having a great rapport with the the prospective tenant, then finding out that the apartment will not suit them because there’s no parking or they have a cat.

These days I’m recommending you start your ad with Rent Compass because you get to post your ad there and craigslist at the same time with a few extra clicks. Edited – As of this morning a posting on Rent Compass will get you on dozen different sites! Rent Compass is AWESOME and it makes my job easier! Which I love!
 

People are funny, and it’s a serious mistake to assume that everybody is like you. What seems like a minus for you might be a bonus to your potential tenant. We take our income properties the way they are, we do the best we can with what we have and that’s all we can do. Certain features that you could not live without might be appealing to someone else.

Some examples of features that might fall into this category are…

In a city of millions, there is endless variety of people and their different tastes so don’t despair if you have a “troublesome” apartment. Tenants rarely get everything they want, and it isn’t until they see a few places that they make sense of their priorities. For instance, they may think a downtown location is important until they see the postage stamp sized condos and prices. In the depth of winter, I certainly reconsider my large lot and sixty foot driveway and envy the condo dwellers. Something is good about every location and apartment and it’s your job to point that out in the ad.

Good Luck!

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