Research, research, research. Who is your competition?, where do they list?, check out what real estate agents have properties like yours listed for in your area. Try craigslis rentometer, padmapper.
Research, research, research. Who is your competition?, where do they list?, check out what real estate agents have properties like yours listed for in your area. Try craigslis rentometer, padmapper.
@Devin E. - zillow.com go to the "for rent" tab and search by city or zip code...see what your enemies...er, I mean your competition is charging for rent. Also postlets.com scroll to the bottom click on browse listings... search by State and then down to City....you will find listings of rentals. Google "property management companies in your area"....click on all of them and open up their individual websites.....look to see what they are charging for rent. HUD (Housing and Urban Development) has info on what fair market rents should be across the country based on the number of bedrooms....go here http://www.huduser.org/portal/datasets/fmr.html and click on the link
click through to find your area. HUD's numbers may not be the same as actual market rents you will see charged by researching the resources I mentioned above but they area a good baseline to go by.
Hopefully those HUD links work. I just corrected them.
I use Craigslist and the local newspaper. I check it every Thursday evening, takes about 30 minutes. I have a spreadsheet with each property type and I log the rent, deposit, if pets are allowed, square footage, type (SFR, duplex, multi, apt), manager/owner, what extras are included (garage, dishwasher, W/D, etc).
I have three years of this data for my rental area now. I use the data to get market rent (for comparable area, amenities, and square footage), info about landlords, and now I can start to see how long tenants stay since addresses are repeating.
In my area Zillow, padmapper, and agents data is way off, so I feel comfortable ahving my own info.
Final Computation of 3-Bedroom FMR for Texas County, MO
Final 3-Bedroom Rent Ratio Final FY 2014 2-Bedroom FMR Final FY 2014 3-Bedroom FMR
1.473 $596 $596 * 1.473 = $878
Is this saying that the fair market rent of a 3 BR unit (house? apartment?) is $596 but HUD would pay $878? Why? And what is the $751 in the first chart?
Hi @Sylvia B. , After you choose your State and then your County, the page you land on will have a table at the very top.
The title of the table should say "Final FY 2014 FMRs By Unit Bedrooms" and then it will break the Fair Market Rent (FMR) by Efficiency, 1br, 2br ,3br and 4br. That is all I look at. I do not click through any of the links or even scroll down the page. That table to me is the summary of all the links and other info on the page as to how they came up with the FMR they show and I do not need all that other info. Hope that helps.
If I am not mistaken, the FMR computed by HUD is a reflection of the rent amount that Section 8 would pay for a particular property in your area based on the number of bedrooms.
Google a couple property managers in the area, and ask them how much they would anticipate the rent would go for. I have started buying rentals in Dallas (I live in San Diego) each time I am preparing to buy a property and I have my shortlist of properties, I send it to two local property managers and they provide me expected rentals rates. They do it in a heartbeat hoping to be my property manager one day. Whether you hire them or not they are a good resource and serve a great purpose for investors, particularly out of state investors such as myself.
Obviously this isn't an out of state option, but maybe boots on the ground can do it for you. Drive around the property in question and call the For Rent signs. Some popular areas won't advertise online because they don't have to - enough traffic to get it rented by people traveling past the house.
@Devin E. hands down the best way to get rental comps is just as
@Lawrence Ratliff said - through a property mgmt company. Brokers tend to overestimate what they would rent for whereas property managers will be held accountable for getting that rent if you choose to use them to manage the properties. Online databases like craigslist, zillow, etc. are hit or miss from my personal experience.