{"id":74350,"date":"2015-08-10T14:30:17","date_gmt":"2015-08-10T20:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/renewsblog\/?p=74350"},"modified":"2021-03-16T11:42:48","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T17:42:48","slug":"2015-08-10-fill-rental-property","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/2015-08-10-fill-rental-property","title":{"rendered":"12 Steps to Quickly Filling Your Rentals (&#038; Keeping Them Full!)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a property investor, there&#8217;s nothing that kills your profitability faster than empty houses. As a property manager, it&#8217;s in your best interest to make sure that your clients &#8212; the investors &#8212; stay profitable. Which means it&#8217;s up to you to have a solid plan for keeping the rentals you&#8217;re in charge of full. There&#8217;s three parts to that plan, and here&#8217;s four tips for each of those three parts.<\/p>\n<h2>Part 1: Keep Your Existing Tenants<\/h2>\n<p>Keeping your existing tenants is a fairly straightforward matter of <em>making them happy to stay<\/em>. The four steps to making your tenants happy are equally straightforward, but it&#8217;s easy to skip one or more of if you&#8217;re focused elsewhere:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Be a professional communicator.<\/strong>\u00a0Respond to complaints quickly &#8212; even if just to say, &#8220;I&#8217;ll get back to you soon.&#8221; Be firm but polite in enforcing the rules. And always share your expectations of how a tenant is supposed to handle situations <em>before<\/em> those situations arise.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Be a regular communicator.<\/strong><em>\u00a0<\/em>Get in touch with your tenants the month after they move in, just to check in and answer any questions they may have. Send them a letter after their third month to the same effect. And send them a reminder &#8212; via email, voice or snail mail &#8212; each month to remind them to pay on time.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Reward good behavior.<\/strong>\u00a0Your tenants should know that you expect them to treat their role as tenants respectfully, but they should also know what the rewards of good behavior are. There are a lot of things that a PM can offer a tenant as rewards, from the rights to repaint to the installation of a small appliance to a professional cleaning.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Stay on top of the property.\u00a0<\/strong>The number one management-caused reason for a broken lease country-wide is a negative experience involving a maintenance request. Even if you can&#8217;t get to a request right away, tell the tenant the plan\u00a0so they know what to expect.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/?attachment_id=74368\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-74368\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-74368\" src=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/fill-vacancy.jpg\" alt=\"fill-vacancy\" width=\"702\" height=\"333\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/fill-vacancy.jpg 702w, https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/fill-vacancy-300x142.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 702px) 100vw, 702px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Related:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/30\/how-to-find-a-tenant\/\" target=\"_blank\">How to Find a Tenant in Any Market: A Comprehensive Guide<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<h2>Part 2: Market for New Tenants Effectively<\/h2>\n<p>From time to time, a tenant will leave even though you did everything right. When that happens, you have to have a proactive plan to replace them quickly and efficiently. Here&#8217;s four steps toward that goal:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Activate marketing immediately upon receiving notice.<\/strong>\u00a0The hour you know that a tenant is leaving, call your advertiser and activate all of your advertising for that house.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Remind your tenant of how the laws in your state work.<\/strong>\u00a0In most of them, you are allowed to show a house to a potential new tenant with only 24 or 48 hours of notice. Tell them to be ready because you&#8217;re going to be bringing people by. We recommend getting the existing tenant to agree to a weekly schedule when you can show the property. You still have to let them know in advance about a showing, but it makes it much more efficient for all involved.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Enlist the tenant to help you out:<\/strong> It&#8217;s amazing how far a little incentive can go. Offer your tenant $10 to clean up a bit before you bring someone over for a showing and $100 if they give you a referral that lands a new tenant after they leave. If they don&#8217;t take you up on it, you haven&#8217;t lost anything &#8212; if they do, you win!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Think\u00a0outside the box.\u00a0<\/strong>There are lots of people out there who have the job of helping others find a place to live. Corporate human resource managers, pastors, social workers and several others can be amazing resources for finding people who need homes. If your traditional advertising hasn&#8217;t worked by the time the house is ready for a tenant, get exotic!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/?attachment_id=74369\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-74369\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-74369\" src=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/fill-rental.jpg\" alt=\"fill-rental\" width=\"702\" height=\"334\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/fill-rental.jpg 702w, https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/fill-rental-300x143.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 702px) 100vw, 702px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Related:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/08\/tips-protect-new-landlords-bad-tenant-situations\/\" target=\"_blank\">6 Tips to Protect Newbie Landlords Against Bad Tenant Situations<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<h2>Part 3: Prepare For the New Tenant Efficiently<\/h2>\n<p>You don&#8217;t get to start a new tenant just because the existing tenant has left &#8212; there&#8217;s a lot of preparation to be done between the two. In order to get that done effectively, try these tips:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Schedule any repairs for the first empty day.<\/strong>\u00a0Right when you start the advertising for the property, call the relevant contractor(s) and schedule them for as soon as they can get there after the tenant&#8217;s last day.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Schedule cleaning for that same day.<\/strong>\u00a0Cleaning never takes just a single day, and unless your contractor is tearing the whole house apart, there&#8217;s going to be places that the cleaning crew can get to that the contractor won&#8217;t be touching. Get everything cleaned that <em>can<\/em> be cleaned, and schedule the cleanup crew to be there the day after (or even later the same day) that the contractor will finish up.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Review the appeal.<\/strong>\u00a0Cleaning and repairs are one thing, but it&#8217;s also important that the rental is attractive to potential tenants. Check the curb appeal, the first impression as you come in the door, and walk through looking for aesthetic turn-offs. You often don&#8217;t have to do much to fix these things, but you can&#8217;t afford to ignore them either.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Screen prospects thoroughly.\u00a0<\/strong>Don&#8217;t <em>ever<\/em> skip this step &#8212; screening prospects is the first and most critical step to making sure that your next tenant sticks around for a long time and is as profitable as possible.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Following these steps consistently and efficiently every time will maximize the profitability of each rental you oversee, which will keep your clients happy &#8212; and you profitable!<\/p>\n<p><em>How do YOU avoid vacancies in your rentals?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Leave your tips below!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a property investor, there&#8217;s nothing that kills your profitability faster than empty houses. As a property manager, it&#8217;s in your best interest to make sure that your clients &#8212; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1593,"featured_media":74370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5183],"tags":[190,1418,790],"class_list":["post-74350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landlording","tag-landlord","tag-property-management","tag-rental-property"],"acf":[],"comment_count":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1593"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}