BiggerPockets

I've used the local, small town paper instead of the nearby, big city paper with limited success. A decent sign in the front yard brings in 3-4x as many calls as the newspaper ad.

Next time I need to list an available house I'll stick with the sign and try Craigslist.

A few more free resources are:

oodle.com
backpage.com
They syndicate a bunch of listings from various sources.

Rent.com costs a ridiculous fortune.
Yahoo rentals has never yielded even a single call as far as I know.

In college towns, some of the off-campus housing offices maintain websites with listings--those have been really good and worth whatever money I've paid into them.

Good point abuot the neighborhood; probably explains a number of no-shows around a sketchy place I owned...

18x24 white poster boards w/black magic marker @ .60 apiece posted on poles and medians around the general neighborhood of the property. Always creates plenty of leads to sift thru. Effective and inexpensive.

Great feedback, everyone. Does anyone else have their own way of advertising vacancies?

I usually advertise my rental units two ways. The first is craigslist and the other is by hanging a sign in the front of the building itself.

However, my experience is that the method of advertising is much less important than the advertisement itself and the unit. With regard to the unit, even for rental properties, I think it's critical to stage the unit with reasonably nice, and color-coordinated furniture that allows the prospective renter to "visualize" living there. With regard to the ad itself, I use as few words as possible to list the facts (e.g., square footage, bedroom/bath). I emphasize the "intangible" parts of the units - walking distance to charming downtown area, private porch in the back for those quiet evenings with a cup of tea and that special someone, etc. These are the qualities that "sell" my building and I want the type of tenants who attracted to the quality of life that I have to offer. My units are not cheap, I only acquire nice buildings with these intangle qualities because I know that, in the long-term, this is sustainable.

That said, my sweet spot are small 4-10 unit apartment buildings that I manage myself, so I need to stage and advertise in this way. If I ran a large, corporate-owned faciliaty of 100 units or so, I wouldn't necessarily do this because then it may be time and cost-prohibitive.

Apollo Madison
Real Estate Investor

I use Craig's list and the website for a local univeristy. I set up both ads to direct traffic to a webpage that I host myself -- with a detailed description of the unit, the neighborhood (including businesses within walking distance), photos of the outside of the property and of the individual rooms within the apartment, and a floor plan. I've found that giving people a lot of information up-front gets me more qualified people calling/emailing me.

I also put a sign in the front lawn, but have found that online advertising usually gets me the most inquiries from the kind of people that I'd most like to rent to.

I always use a property manager . He puts an ad in the local newspaper and a sign on the lawn . He puts an ad on his website also. But the most effective way is the MLS . When you use a property manager make sure he is a real estate agent . Iprefer to pay 5% of the lease one time not monthly fee .

I am still trying to figure out what is effective. Here are some of the things I have tried:

1. Internet savvy tenants: Craigs list and rent.com. Both are excellent.
Number of leads from rent.com is huge. 2-3 emails a day.

2. Local news paper: Print ad did not generate any leads.
But response from their online classifed section was excellent.

3. Local free publication: No leads at all to date.

4. How to reach section8 tenants? I have not figured that out.Any ideas?

5. Local flyers:No leads

Is there anyone on this group in Triangle ,NC area? Let me know if we can exchange ideas on what works locally?

Thank you,
Rye

In my area this is actually really simple. The section 8 office has bulletin boards with housing rentals and best of all it's free to list your property! So I always list there if I'm willing to rent the unit to section 8. Ask the receptionist when you call their main line and you should be set.

Craigslist. The first time I used it, I received 20 emails within the first hour of posting. I haven't looked back ever since.

However, I think referrals from existing tenants works the best. They end up doing a lot of the pre-screening for you. I've noticed many landlords and property managers offering incentives, usually $X credit for rent, to get referrals. But, I think the best referrals are ones made organically by happy tenants, without any incentives.

-UCL