Tag: Rental Marketing

Categories
Landlords

7 Ways to Attract Newly WFH Tenants

Now that work-from-home is normal, many Americans are planning to move!

The pandemic has shown both employers and employees that remote working is possible, profitable, and preferable. Employers enjoy lower overhead costs, while employees can relocate to areas with a lower cost of living and larger homes.

Don’t believe that work-from-home is really here to stay?

Just check out these statistics from Upwork reports:

  • 1 in 4 Americans said they’ll be working remotely in 2021.
  • The U.S. predicts an influx of 14-23 million remote workers soon.
  • 14-23 million Americans intend to relocate as a result of remote work.
  • 36.2 million Americans (22% of the workforce) will be working remotely by 2025—an 87% increase from the number of remote workers prior to COVID-19.

With so many people planning to relocate, your tenant base can expand beyond the traditional type of applicants you received in the past – like those who work at nearby companies. Tenants can now come from anywhere, work anywhere, and will have priorities that are different from tenants who commute to a job nearby.

As a landlord, you need to know what these remote-working tenants are looking for, so you can tailor your marketing efforts and investment strategy to capture this huge new market.

Let’s look at 7 different ways you can attract them:

1. Offer a Work-Conducive Space

Whether your rental property is a stand-alone house or apartment units in a building, remote workers now prioritize a space for working almost as much as a space for sleeping! They will look for a home that’s well-lit and has a dedicated office space, ideally – perfect for long hours of work.

This could be as simple as a secluded corner where an office table would fit perfectly, or a spare bedroom that’s easily convertible to a home office. Both areas should be ready for additional electrical wiring (e.g., outlets or light sockets) and additional shelves or cabinets. Remember, remote workers will be spending at least 8 hours of their day in whatever working space your home can provide—if you want to attract them, you need to cater to their working needs and make this area as ideal as possible.

2. Advertise Where They Are – Online

With the coronavirus solidifying our dependency on technology, many landlords have already adapted to digital means of advertising. Now, with most applicants finding and even viewing properties online, digital listings have become more important than ever.

In other words, you need to create a killer ad on real estate sites and renting platforms, or else nobody will find you!

Aside from standard details, such as the rental rate and location, you should also highlight parts of your property that will be attractive to remote worker renters. This will vary from property to property.

For apartment units, this may mean laundry services or swimming pools, but the most important thing is to make sure there are stable, fast internet speeds available from providers in your area. It may also mean plenty of nearby businesses, shopping centers and other local amenities, like services to support remote working (print shops, etc.). With proximity to the office becoming a lower priority, having amenities and services near their residence might appeal to tenants more than commuting times in the current environment.

In special cases, you might advertise a home specifically because it gives the off-the-grid appeal. Remote workers finally being able to move away from the city might be on the lookout for a quiet retreat from the hustle and bustle of metropolitan life, so rural and remote rentals might be more in-demand now with WFH tenants.

3. Emphasize Value for Money

One of the biggest reasons why remote workers move is because they want to pay lower rent, and they’re now no longer limited to renting in expensive areas, just to be closer to their office.

Think about this when marketing your rental properties.

For example, if your home is a 3-bed, spacious property in a Class A neighborhood that rents for the same cost as a 1-bedroom apartment in your closest major city, you could say: “2000 sq ft house on ½ an acre (in an award-winning school system), for less than the price of a Chicago apartment!”

Speaking directly to the pain points currently experienced by your tenant base will help make your listing more appealing to them, and could help you stand out from the crowd when marketing to WFH applicants.

4. Provide 3D or Virtual Tours

Because of social distancing rules, travel restrictions, and the risk of infection, many people now avoid visiting properties in-person. Providing virtual tours for prospective tenants will allow them to “visit” your property freely at any time of the day – from anywhere in the country! This makes it easy for remote workers who are planning to relocate to view your property, even if they’re stuck in the middle of a city at the moment.

There are plenty of softwares available on the market that specialize in creating virtual tours for your property. Consider getting a professional to come film and create your virtual or 3D tour, because in some cases, it will be the only point of reference your tenants have before deciding whether or not to rent your property. It’s important to make a great impression with your tour, so spending a little cash on having it done by an expert is well worth it – especially since you’ll be able to re-use the same 3D tour in future years (as long as you don’t do any major renovations).

5. Assure a Contactless Process

Now that remote work is becoming the norm, you (as the landlord) should also consider having a contactless process for managing your rental properties. Not only will this make things easier for you to manage, but it also makes the system safer for your tenants.

Nearly everything in real estate can be done remotely, such as:

  • Self-guided virtual tours
  • Thorough tenant screening
  • Document preparations
  • Securing digital signatures
  • Collecting rent via online portals
  • Delegating, coordinating, and monitoring tasks to contractors

As a bonus, remote worker tenants will most probably have no problems adapting to a digital process – in fact, it’s what they’re used to, at this point! Mention in your listing that you offer these contactless solutions, and it can help attract these tech-savvy tenants.

6. Highlight Health & Safety Measures

Moving during a pandemic can be a scary undertaking, especially if tenants are worried about coming into contact with the virus when they move into their new home.

To give them peace of mind, make sure you thoroughly disinfect the property before move-in day by deep-cleaning the carpets and furniture, mopping floors, wiping down surfaces, and clearing the ventilation systems.

You can hire a professional disinfection service to sterilize the property with UV light, smoke, or cleaning solutions, and even provide a certificate stating when the disinfection took place. Again, highlighting these safety measures in your ads will help reassure applicants who are concerned about transmission.

7. Allow their Pet Companions

According to The Humane Society of the United States, 72% of renters have pets. Now that many people are transitioning to WFH, this number might even increase.

Some tenants who never were able to care for a pet before due to long hours spent out of the house might now decide to get that puppy they’ve always dreamed of, since they’re working from home. Others may be feeling isolated during the lockdown and have only their furry friend to keep them company – so if your rental means giving up their pet companion, it might be a deal-breaker! Allowing pets right now therefore could be an additional way to attract remote workers as tenants.

However, if you don’t want to consider having pets in your rental properties, just be aware that more tenants could be trying to sneak in unauthorized pets now than in previous years – so that’s something to keep an extra-close eye on when inspecting properties.

Conclusion

The best landlords are always on the lookout for the next real estate trends. Remote working is just one of the huge trends that emerged in 2020, but experts are predicting that it’s a trend that will remain in 2021 and beyond.

Because of this, landlords need to make sure their rental properties are primed to attract the huge influx of remote workers who are on the hunt for a new home.

Take advantage of this new opportunity to meet the demands of our ever-changing society—and grow your rental business in the process!

Are you renting out to remote-working tenants? What are the things they tend to look for, in your experience?

Image courtesy of Teryn Elliott

Categories
Wholesaling

Where to Find the Best Real Estate Wholesaling Deals

Like plenty of new investors, you may have decided to try out real estate wholesaling.

Using this investment method, the turnaround period is short, and you don’t need a lot of money (if any) to start—this is why a lot of first-time investors gravitate towards wholesaling.

However, to be successful at it, you do need to find the best properties for wholesaling. After all, not all deals have an equal potential for giving you the returns you desire. You’ll need to source houses significantly (ideally around 50%) under market value, and for that, you’ll also need to be dealing with motivated sellers. 

Finding these kinds of properties isn’t easy – that’s why not everyone and their mother is out there working as a successful wholesale. But to get you started, here’s a guide to help you source profitable wholesaling deals.

Offline Methods

There are two main kinds of wholesale deal sources: offline and online. Though many will consider online methods to be more efficient—especially in today’s digitally driven world—offline techniques also have their benefits.

Those who were successful at real estate wholesaling started their careers with these old-fashioned methods. Though these methods often require more time and resources to set up, you have a good chance of sealing your first deal with the help of these proven techniques:

Driving for Dollars

Before the internet, driving for dollars was one of the most popular ways to hunt for wholesale leads. If you’re tight on budget, this old-fashioned way can still work wonders.

You simply hop into your car and drive through target neighborhoods (i.e. places where buyers actually want to live or invest), looking for properties that show signs of neglect. Some signs to look for are the following:

  • Abandonment or vacancy
  • Overgrown lawn and plants
  • Boarded-up windows
  • Visible damages
  • Uncollected trash

Once you spot a potential property, use public records to find the name of the registered owner, and contact them to make an offer. Often, an unused property could be more of a burden to the owner than a boon – like the unwanted home of a deceased relative, for example – and they’ll be fairly motivated to consider letting someone take it off their hands.

Bandit Signs

Bandit signs are another low-cost and effective way to find deals in your local housing market. Often spotted on random street corners or busy traffic areas, these signs say things like “We Buy Houses” or “Sell Your House for Cash”. Place them in the neighborhoods you want to target for your real estate wholesaling deals.

However, before you start putting up your own, just make sure that these signs aren’t illegal in your area!

Direct Mail Campaigns

This involves sending out postcards or letters to potential sellers, expressing your interest in buying their property. Direct mail campaigns can be effective, though they’re a bit pricier and slower to generate leads than their equivalent online methods.

You’ll need to secure mailing lists and be persistent with getting a response. To increase your success rate, only target owners of pre-foreclosure properties, high equity or delinquent mortgages, probates, and other types of motivated sellers.

Networking

Joining local real estate investment clubs is a great way to find deals. There may be sellers that just haven’t listed their properties yet, which a network of agents, investors, and attorneys can inform you about. Making connections in the industry will also grow your buyers’ list, increasing your chances of closing deals on both ends.

Newspapers

Old-fashioned newspaper advertising can help you reach sellers who aren’t online. After all, 10% of all Americans aren’t online—equating to nearly 33 million Americans!

To avoid missing an opportunity for a real estate wholesaling deal, you can reach more people by posting “I Buy Houses!” ads in local newspapers.

Online methods

Online methods are often more convenient and faster at producing results, though they may not always be as effective as offline methods—and there’s plenty of competition online that you have to contend with, too! Nevertheless, you can still discover a lot of good deals online that you wouldn’t find otherwise.

Here’s how:

Wholesaling Website

Creating a website allows you to target a larger customer audience. With a single click, you can reach thousands more people—a lot more than you can reach with local signages.

Your website should sell yourself as a willing and capable real estate wholesaler, convincing people to trust you with their property. You should optimize your website with SEO, PPC advertising, and social media marketing (as well as retargeting ads) to generate leads and seal more deals.

Expired MLS listings

Expired MLS (Multiple Listing Service) listings are properties that weren’t sold by the date specified in the listing contract between the seller and the listing agent. There aren’t a lot of properties that get this far, but a real estate agent or broker should be able to help you find these deals.

To do this, focus on a particular city or neighborhood, check the properties within, and get in touch with the owners of the expired listings to show your interest in their property. Usually, they’re pretty motivated to sell, since the property has already sat on the market for a long time with no buyers coming forward.

Online Forum and Auction Sites

Craigslist, Hubzu, ForSaleByOwner, and Auction.com are places where people often post to sell quickly. This makes them potential gold mines for real estate investors, and wholesalers in particular. If you move faster than your competition, you can snag some great deals from these websites.

Final Thoughts

For you to be successful in real estate wholesaling, you have to make numerous offers to seal enough deals—both online and offline.

Once you find a motivated seller with a distressed property, make sure to move fast to get them under contract. Then, follow through with assigning the rights to your buyer and collecting your fee, before beginning your search anew!

Any other sources we’ve missed? Which one’s your go-to strategy to find deals?

Image Courtesy of PhotoMIX

Categories
Landlords

How to Write a Perfect Property Description to Attract the Best Tenants

Your property listing is the very first touchpoint between you and your ideal tenant, so it’s pretty essential to get this right.  A big part of this is the written property description which should appeal to the type of person you’d most like to have as a renter, whether that be young professionals or middle-class families. This article will show you how to get inside the mind of your prospective tenant and tailor your description to speak to them, just like professional marketers do when they want their product to stand out from the crowd.

Think Like a Marketer

As you prepare your rental listings, always write to attract your target tenant. You can do this by finding out as much as you can about their interests, concerns, and needs, and addressing these within your description.While you can’t discriminate as a landlord, you can still tailor your messaging to make it sound more appealing to your preferred target demographic, making them more likely to choose your home over another similar property on the market.

Know Your Audience

Once you have an idea for who your target tenant is, you can use tools like social media to help get inside their head. Look through property groups or ads on Facebook, and read through the comments to get an idea for the types of questions that concern your audience, and even the language they use to describe their ideal home. Write these words down and incorporate them into your property description, to help your home appear when they search for these keywords online. 

Do Market Research

You can also use social media, and other property listing sites, to get a feel for the competition in your area. The point here is not to copy other descriptions, but rather to understand the ways in which your home is unique, so you can better emphasise these qualities in your own ads.

Craft Compelling Copy

There are two kinds of buyers: emotional and rational. You can make your marketing copy appeal to both of these kinds of prospective tenants by choosing the right words.

For those driven by emotion, tell a story with your property description to help them imagine themselves living in your home (e.g. “Curl up by the fireplace in the evening with a good book”). Just make sure the story you use is something that would speak to your ideal tenant.

For those driven by logic, the best way to “sell” them on your property is to remove any element of doubt from the equation. To do this, try to answer any potential question they may have about the property in the description itself. Take note of all the questions you see while doing your online research, as well as those which are asked most frequently by your prospective tenants, and incorporate the answers to them in your ads. This way, when they see your property, they’ll be able to tell right away whether it’s right for them, and this will give them confidence to choose your place over all the others on the market.

Embrace The New Normal

In the era of the new normal, tenants’ priorities are changing, so highlighting features which appeal to people in the current climate is another way to help make your property stand out.. Concerns about  privacy and seclusion from neighbors, and the presence of big indoor/outdoor spaces, entertainment or recreational areas, large kitchens, home offices, and spaces which can be easily separated to accommodate people living and working at home together are just some of the things that tenants are now prioritizing more than ever before, so if your property has any of these features, make sure to emphasize and leverage on that as a selling point.

When creating your listings, you don’t need to stand out by having the fanciest property description in the entire market. You only need to stand out to one person: your ideal tenant. The best way to do this is by tailoring your language to address their desires and concerns directly, just like the best business marketers do.

Image Courtesy of Ivan Samkov

Categories
DIY

Why Do I Keep Attracting Bad Tenants?

Cops outside a house.

In the landlord sewing circle, conversations have a way of moving toward bad tenants.

No matter where your properties are located or how high your rental rates are, you’re bound to come across some bad renters — it’s just part of the business. Bad tenants affect more than just your bottom-line, they can wear on your sanity as well. If you feel like you’re attracting more than your fair share of “slumtenants,” maybe you are. Before things get any worse, take an introspective look at your policies and evaluate your business model.

Where Are You Purchasing Properties?

If you own properties in rougher neighborhoods, expect more problems and repairs. Lower demographic areas have lower income levels, higher levels of illegal activity, and many residents have a criminal past. Many will not have the decency to respect you or your property.

How and Where Do You Advertise?

If you’re nailing hand-written flyers to telephone poles, you give the impression that you’re desperate and probably will take anyone just to fill the vacancy. But if you take the time to take hi-def photographs and/or professionally made virtual tour videos to post on your site, you will attract a different type of renter. By including the rental rates in your marketing material and your website, you will instantly narrow the number of potential applicants. By charging higher rates, you’ll weed out much of the riff-raff.

The Application Process Is Your First Impression

Was the potential tenant on time for appointments? If they showed up late without calling or just blew you off with no consideration for your time, they’re probably not going to have much respect to your property either. Were they courteous and neatly dressed? If their appearance is sloppy, imagine what the inside of your rental will look like. 

For starters, charge an appropriate application fee. If prospective renters can’t scrape together the fee, how are they going to come up with the rent? Also, it’s smart to present a lengthy application, people who aren’t serious won’t bother to take the time to fill it out. Was the application written legibly, fully completed, and signed? Texting is ruining people’s penmanship, so that’s not the perfect marker, but if vital information or sections are left blank, you have to ask yourself, “What are they hiding?” These are some early red flags, though it’s not foolproof, it does you give an idea of how they will act as tenants.  

Don’t Skimp On Lease Details 

Sure, you can go online and just print out a lease, but be careful with cookie-cutter contracts. You want to be confident that every one of your required terms is in the lease. You’re better off getting an attorney to draft one for you, the initial cost will more than pay for itself when problems arise, or you find yourself in court. Make sure all tenants are listed and sign the lease. Once presented with the contract, many tenants will try asking for amendments, resist the urge to negotiate the terms of YOUR LEASE. By doing so, potential tenants will feel like they found themselves a “pushover,” you’re setting yourself up for problems in the future. 

Get The Scoop From Past Landlords

Your application has a section for references for a reason, make sure you contact previous landlords. A little extra time now doing basic research will save you the trouble of having to deal with the aftermath of damages or missed rent payments. Be glad to get the bad news early and weed out any subpar tenants. Past behavior is a good indicator of how they will treat you and your property. 

Max Out The Deposit

For the same reason it’s smart to charge appropriate application fees and rents, get as much of a security deposit as the law allows. It will weed out bad tenants that may have trouble coming up with cash on the 1st of every month. 

Don’t Be Lenient With Your Policies

Bad tenants are like sharks, they can sense prey in the water. You have a business to run and bills to pay. It is vital to be firm and consistent with all of your policies. Being passive about tenant screening, rent collection, and other house rules only cause more problems throughout their tenancy.  

You can’t always spot a problem tenant. Someone is bound to sneak through eventually. But with due diligence and proper screening, you should be able to limit your liability. You want to stay on top of your rentals and arrange for periodic inspections so you won’t get surprised when they move out. Finally, don’t rush the process just to fill a vacancy, if there’s any doubt, then there’s no doubt. 

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