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Are you a landlord managing your own apartment building (or multiple buildings) and having some trouble leasing out your vacant units? Or perhaps you have hired a property management company to do the leasing for you, but you just have not been getting the results you are looking for?
As a professional property management company, we want to share with you some quick tips that we have learned along the way while managing numerous rental units, from single-family homes all the way to luxury apartment buildings. These tips will help you to reach more people and fill your vacancies faster.
As a quick note, Coastline Equity actually manages a variety of property types such as residential buildings, office space, and retail centers. The leasing process varies between these different asset classes and so, in this article, we are going to be focusing specifically on residential leasing.
TIP #1: MARKET TO EXISTING TENANTS
First things first, as soon as we receive a 30-day notice that one of our existing tenants is leaving, we immediately go out and put up signage around the building. These can be in the form of banners hung along railings or fences, signage on the lawn or in front-facing windows, flyers on community bulletin boards, or an email blast to the existing tenants.
The goal here is to take immediate action and market the upcoming vacancy to the people already closest to the building. Not only will this help to bring in people from the surrounding community, but also encourage referrals from your current tenants.
Assuming you have done a great job of getting quality tenants in your building in the first place, seeking referrals from your existing tenants can prove to be very effective at attracting other great candidates, as well as building a stronger sense of community at your property.
TIP #2: CREATE ONE LISTING FOR MULTIPLE PLATFORMS
Nowadays, many of your applicants will come from the internet. This is great because it gives you the opportunity to reach vastly more people from different areas. In order to cast that marketing net as wide as possible, it is useful to post your ads across multiple online platforms. The challenge, however, is that doing this often means using up your precious time to create the same ad, over and over, for each individual website that you are posting on.
In our office, we use specialized property management software in order to create one listing that will then be shot out to all those separate websites. This helps us to reach more people with less work, meaning we can focus more time on actually speaking with, and meeting, prospective tenants. Again, we use software that is more of an all-in-one property management software, but there are a variety of different apps and sites that can focus more specifically on the marketing for you.
TIP #3: KNOW YOUR FAIR HOUSING LAWS
When listing your vacancies, you want to make sure that you are marketing in a way that will not expose you to any kind of Fair Housing violations. Fair Housing is a very important topic all on its own, which is why we created a YouTube video specifically on that subject.
This topic essentially covers what you can and cannot say to a prospective tenant, in order to avoid claims of discrimination. These laws extend not only to the conversations that you have with prospective tenants in person, while you’re showing your vacancy, but also to the words that you put into your marketing campaigns online.
If you are managing your building yourself, make sure you are up to date on these laws. If you have a property manager doing the leasing for you, be sure that they are knowledgeable in this area and that you have confidence in the way they handle any leasing interactions on your behalf.
TIP #4: CONSIDER CREATING A WEBSITE FOR YOUR PORTFOLIO
If you have multiple properties or are the owner of a larger and/or more luxury-style apartment building, you may want to consider investing in the creation of a customized website for your portfolio. The idea of creating a website might sound daunting at first, but nowadays it can actually be pretty easy with online website templates that do not require you to know how to code.
We have assisted some of our clients with this process. Not only can this serve as an online portal for your existing tenants to pay rent and make maintenance requests, but it also lists all your vacancies in one place. Whenever we are talking to a prospective tenant on the phone, we can direct them to this website, where they can see all the floor plan and pricing options that are available to them. This is particularly helpful for much larger buildings that more frequently have vacancies that need to be leased.
TIP #5: HIRE SOMEONE TO COORDINATE YOUR LEASING ACTIVITY
Between the big tasks like handling maintenance requests or remodeling your vacant units, to the less-obvious ones like complying with City inspections or processing payments, managing real estate can certainly be a full-time job!
The leasing process adds yet another level of complexity because it often involves handling a lot of phone calls from people interested in your space, many of which do not end up being qualified, or if they do qualify, may not even show up for the tour you scheduled with them. It is also a part of the job that requires you to be constantly available, often during weekends and after-work hours.
In our leasing process, we have property managers that handle the day-to-day tasks and administrative work, as well as meet prospective tenants for tours of the property. But we also have team members that are dedicated solely to fielding all the calls, screening all the prospects, answering their questions, and scheduling the tours with our property managers. They can also help to direct the prospects to vacant units in the building, other than the original one that they called about, or even to other buildings in our client’s portfolio.
All of this helps to ensure that we do everything that we can to lease the vacant units for our clients as quickly as possible, so consider contracting at least one person to help you specifically with this part of the leasing process.
As we all know, marketing and leasing your vacant units as quickly as possible is key to maximizing the performance and return of your investment, which is why it is a good idea to create an efficient system around it. We hope you learned something new from this article.
Thanks for reading!
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