How to Find a Tenant

It may seem like a daunting task, finding quality tenants to rent one or more of your properties. The goal is to reach a high volume of potential renters and narrow it down to the perfect tenants. This is your home after all. And ensuring it is taken care of in the hands of others is also key. Here are seven ways to maximize your outreach and find those perfect tenants!

Online Listings

Several websites offer free advertising to property owners seeking to rent out their estates. One of the most valuable features of online advertising is this. Most websites allow prospective tenants to search for homes in specific locations. Along with price per month and the number of bedrooms and bathrooms they are looking for. Some great websites to utilize are:

• Zillow Rental Manager and Cozy – So long as you have an open account with Zillow, you’ll be able to publish a free advertisement that will post to other rental sites, such as Hotpads and Trulia, too. Much like Zillow, Cozy offers complimentary features and automatically populates websites like Realtor.com and Doorsteps.
• Craigslist – Often overlooked, Craigslist is a great tool to exploit. With an easy-to-use platform, you’ll find it quite simple to post your home or apartment for rent, with pictures, price, location, and description for potential tenants to view.
• SocialServe.com – SocialServe is a great tool when consenting to government subsidized housing.

Social Networking

Social media platforms get the word out instantly to all your followers and more. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts are perfect for this. They allow you to post about your listings, a description of the estate, location, etc., and even a link to the listing if you’ve advertised it on other websites.

Newspaper Ads

Newspaper advertisements are often overlooked for their seldom use. If you play your cards right, they’ll prove beneficial. Since Sundays are the one day a week newspapers experience the most circulation, listing your estate then will maximize your exposure. If you happen to live in a heavily populated area, this will only help.

Rental advertisements in newspapers are allotted only a relatively small space, you’ll need to make every word count. To save space, replace ‘bedroom’ with ‘BR’ and ‘washer/dryer’ with ‘W/D’.

Flyers & Word of Mouth

Posting flyers around the community of your rental estate and spreading the word verbally does more than you realize. Business via word of mouth remains one of the most versatile methods. Coupled with flyers incorporating bold headlines, large photographs, and tear-offs with your contact and estate address information attached will get the word out to locals searching to become tenants.

Post these flyers near or at shopping plazas, churches, grocery stores, bus stops, train stations, etc.; anywhere heavily populated is best!

As your flyers do the unspoken work, verbally spreading the word to your friends and family will be a sure way of making headway. Always carry flyers with you so when you tell people about your rental, you can hand them a flyer with all the detailed information to gain their interest and give them more of an incentive to contact you or continue to spread the word.

Property “For Rent” Signs

“For Rent” signs with your phone number attached is useful in that it grabs the attention of locals driving by. Tons of tenants want to remain in the location they currently live in, so any potential tenants having seen and passing your sign will be more interested.

If you’re looking to rent out your home and find those perfect tenants, or find a home to rent for you and your family, visit www.jeremyganse.com, The Jeremy Ganse Home Selling Team. Also, feel free to contact our direct line at 717-208-4240 if you have any other questions.