Quote from @Greg Sawyer:
Hello All,
First time posting, but I've been reading/listening a lot. Thank you all for all the helpful content. My wife and I bought and fixed up our first property and it has now been listed on Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads, Realtor, and FB Marketplace for a week now. We have had lots of "inquiries" from Zillow, but none that have followed through with answering questions or truly scheduling a showing or anything like that. After 5-6 days we opened it up to allow pets, knowing that we were squeezing our tenant pull down too small and didn't get any real interest for a couple days after that. We were talking about dropping the rent from $1650 to $1600 to drive some interest knowing that we are approaching holidays and the slower winter season, but we just got our first solid applicant last night (Researched comps showed pricing should be: Zillow $1688, BP $1650, Rentometer $1600, two comps in neighborhood with 1 less bedroom are at $1600 and $1550 but they have been vacant for a while). Only down side to this tenant so far is they want to start their lease in January. I obviously don't want to let it sit vacant in December, but so far this is the only solid and responsive applicant I've had. I am meeting them tonight to show them the place and would like to have some ideas on how to approach this topic with them.
1. What strategies could I use in this scenario to encourage them to sign a lease for December?
2. If they absolutely cant start till January, would you ask them to pay for part of the month to help cover holding costs?
3. Should I just leave it up and see if we get any more interest?
4. Should we drop the price and try to drive more interest? Even though if things go through with this prospective tenant they will be paying $1650 and $20 each per month for two dogs netting $1690 (that's very attractive lol)?
Thank you all for your time and insight!
Great question! Heres a couple notes I would say:
1) I would anticipate waiting about 1-2 months to fill a property (depending on the market), which means you want to start marketing a property asap. I know your situation is different, but typically you'd ask a tenant a couple months before their lease is up if they want to resign. If they say no, then you'd be able to start marketing the property as available in a couple months and have plenty of time to fill it. Don't feel like a bad landlord or like you have a bad property just because you can't fill it in a week!
2) In regards to them wanting to start a month later, here is an offer that I have used with my current tenant on a property: let them know that you love their application, but that it's a bit far out for you and that another applicant might come along that will be willing to start sooner. Tell them they can lock in the property If the sign a lease that, for example, starts on Dec 7. Be sure to emphasize that they would start paying on that date and do the math as to how much they would need at that date as most people are living paycheck to paycheck so they might not have the money available. I ran into that a clarification issue with my tenant; they were confused why they were paying early.
3) It wouldn't be terrible idea to lower the rent to 1600 to increase interest but I personally wouldn't dream of allowing pets.
Hope this is helpful!
