Need advice around rent strategies

[Gerald Dougherty]

Hey everyone, just purchased our first rental property (SFR) and our excited to start our journey. If the house will be rent ready in mid-December, would you recommend a 15 month lease or so that it would renew in Spring? The rent calculator in BP as well as Rentometer both come in around $2,900 per month. Is that a good starting point in marketing for rent or would you go higher or lower? It also looks like Rent Redi is a good choice to manage properties, especially with it being free through BP. Appreciate any strategy tips.

It's been said a lot on the podcasts and forums, that while it's super convenient to search on-line for properties, it doesn't compare with seeing them in person. There were properties we thought for sure we'd be interesting in making an offer, but the actual condition of the house and/or neighborhood were much worse. Seeing a lot of properties in-person really enabled us to get started making offers.

[Polo Vazquez]

First of all.. Congratulations!
Yes on the 15 month lease if you can get the tenant to sign it. It might be easier to do 5 months then a year. Another thing you can do if the lease will be up in December, is to tell them once their lease is up they will be set on a month to month. Most people are hesistant to move out in December, specially if you give them a month to month option.

I don't know about $2900 for the rent. Ask your realtor. He can pull comparable rents for you. I also use the bing search engine. Just type properties for rent in "your city" and it show you rentals from a bunch of different websites. Never try to go to high in rents or else it will sit vacant. Alway rent out at price then slowly increase every year.

I use stessa.com for account (it's awesome, I highly recommend it) and apartments.com to collect rents. I think you can collect rents with stessa as well now. I haven't looked into it because I'm too lazy to switch eveyone over.

[Eliott Elias]

If you're new I would reccomend seeing these in person. There is a lot more that goes into a property than it's condition 

[Nathan Gesner]

Quote from @Gerald Dougherty:

Welcome to the BiggerPockets forums and congratulations on your first purchase!

Calculators and estimators are OK for general market research, but I would evaluate the home based to comparable rentals on the market. Not all 4bed/3bath homes are the same in terms of quality, layout, amenities, etc. Neighborhoods are different, views are different, etc. Computer algorithms can't measure that. You may find there are ten other homes like yours on the market but they are all older and in worse condition, or you're closer to a good school, or your house sits right next to the highway while the rest are in quiet communities.

[Eliott Elias]

Get with a realtor and ask them what the market says you can rent the place for. They have data on homes that have already rented, you may be leaving money on the table. If you don't understand the area I recommend hiring someone who does or seeing for yourself