Listing Property Prior to Completed Construction

[Alex Ferraro]

I’m finishing up a gut rehab on the Northside of Chicago in the next few weeks, and am wondering whether it makes sense to market my rental unit prior to the construction being 100% completed and professional pictures being taken.

For those of you who do a lot of BRRRRs, do you list your rentals before the rehab is completed? If so, how far in advance do you list it? And do you include in-progress pictures in your listing, or do you just list it as “construction in progress”?

Thanks!

Alex

[Alyssa Dyer]

I am in OKC, so the market is likely pretty different so take this with a grain of salt. 

We will list if all we have left is cleaning, landscaping, etc. We do a lot of low income but we have nicer houses than are in the area. They lease super quickly so we need them to be ready pretty immediately for our tenant demographic. 

Generally our rule of thumb is that we will list when we are 100% certain of timeline. I.E. if we need to install finishes, clean, landscape, photograph, etc. there's a fairly high probability that something can go wrong and the domino effect of canceling/rescheduling will be more pain that it's worth. The last thing you want is a tenant relationship to start with you missing a deadline and they can't move in, haha. 

Hope this helps!