Knowing how to market your rental property is an important skill that every property owner needs. If it takes you a week to find a new tenant, you’ve lost 2 percent of your annual income from that property. If it takes a month, that’s 8 ½ percent. That’s assuming you can get a new tenant signed up and moved into where they can actually start paying rent. Vacancy rates often make the difference between a profitable rental and one that drains you. Don’t throw money away by not effectively marketing the availability of your unit. If you don’t want to or are having trouble doing it yourself, hire a property management company to save you time, money, and headaches.

Either way, start by getting your rental up on every social media platform you can find. It costs you nothing or little to nothing, and it is a form of marketing you can do late at night in your pajamas. Next, take a look at any large employers and major retailers in the area. If there is any way you can post your property on an employee bulletin board or at a public notice board in some heavily patronized shop, that may also be beneficial. Laundromats are always a good addition to your list of marketing efforts. The people who use them are almost always renters and they’re stuck there for an hour or two with nothing to do except read notices.

Don’t neglect the obvious either. As soon as your old tenant is gone, or even while they are finalizing their move-out, get a sign up in the front yard. You could end up with a new tenant on the line before the old one even moves out. They might even be so eager to get in right away that you will have to do less renovation work to get it prepped for the market. Putting notices in weekly shopper-style publications or newspapers will often yield results at little cost. If your rental is close to a military base, they might have newspapers of their own as well.

The big factor to keep in mind is that you want to be quick and upfront with your marketing. If you spend a month getting things all prettied up and only then do you begin getting the word out, it may take another month to land a tenant, followed by even more time if they have to wait out their current lease and get moved in to your property. You could be out 25 percent of your gross income if you don’t get busy right away.

Specialized Property Management Birmingham knows the challenges of finding tenants in a timely manner. However, we pride ourselves on keeping vacancy rates as low as possible for our clients, while still finding responsible and reliable tenants. Let us help you! Contact us online for more information, or call us at 205-417-1475 today!