What is your best strategy for finding tenants for single family homes?
I am in Pittsburgh, PA and although I have a management company dealing with my property, I want to know best practices about this point in order to apply it right on time for this property.
I would ask your property manager what they do. If you have a PM they should be handling it and getting it rented. Some areas rentals are moving fast, others are sitting for longer. Don't try to overstep or get antsy but on the other token make sure they are doing what you hired them for
Is your property management company coming up short? Are you renting it out yourself and they are just doing the management afterwards? If you are paying a property management company (presumably one month’s rent to actually get it rented), this should be a conversation with them about their best practices. If you are unhappy with their work, I recommend discussing with them sooner rather than later as you are spending a lot of money for their services I’m sure.
What is your best strategy for finding tenants for single family homes?
I am in Pittsburgh, PA and although I have a management company dealing with my property, I want to know best practices about this point in order to apply it right on time for this property.
We tend to find the best applicants from Zillow usually. For my own properties we have professional pictures taken, virtually stage them, and then post on all of the sites where tenants are looking.
We do not post signs in the yard because it results in too many nuisance calls with nonserious prospects.
If you want to do photos and virtual staging in Pittsburgh where the leasing fee is usually under $1500 then you should expect to pay for that yourself and not the PM since that's a good chunk of the leasing fee if they pay for it themselves.
Single family homes are generally pretty easy to find tenants for if they are clean, reasonably renovated, and priced appropriately. With most owners that we manage for I find that the biggest issues are either that they did not turnover the space entirely or they want to price ahead of the median rent too far. If you have a reason to price high you can do that, but be ready to extend your vacancy a good bit usually.