St. Petersburg, Florida House Rentals and Home Rentals

How To Market Homes For Rent

One of the biggest issues facing landlords and landladies is finding good tenants for their rental properties. This article covers some of the best ways to market homes for rent, qualify tenants and secure them with a lease.

The first step is to find prospective tenants.

Timing Your Rental Vacancies

This is a luxury landlords don't often have, but January is one of the busiest months for people looking for homes to rent, so that is a great time to have availability to increase the quantity and quality of your applicants. January is busy as the holiday season is over, and also many people get their W2s, get their taxes done by one of the streamlined tax firms that gives them an advance on their refund, and they use that refund as a payment on a new rental home.

Tenant Referrals

Existing tenants may want their friends or family to move in close to them. Or neighbors of the rental properties may be inclined to make sure that it is people that they know who move in next door.

Note that it may be illegal to pay an incentive to someone to find you a customer, such as a tenant, in a real estate transaction, if the person paid is not a licensed real estate agent.

For Rent or For Lease Sign

The sign should be two sided and perpendicular to the street. If you are on a low traffic street maybe you can rent space from a corner property to increase exposure. Many rental property owners will put snipe signs on busy streets as well. Most local government codes will outlaw this practice, but it does happen all the time.

Put the rent amount on the sign to qualify tenants. Put as much information on the sign to qualify tenants, e.g. number of beds and baths, deposit amount, pets, web site with more information. And the phone number of course!

Many people will call and ask what the rent is, even though the rent is on the sign! Those are the dumb ones, the forgetful ones and the nervous ones just making conversation.

Put a note on a For Rent sign that says please do not disturb occupants, in order to deter vandals, even if the property is vacant.

There are a couple of down sides to using signs. In my experience the average quality of the applicants is not good. There may be some diamonds in the rough, but other lead sources are much better.

The other down side is that unwelcome characters can see them. Including the city code enforcement people. Some cities or neighborhoods have rules saying that rental properties have to be inspected between tenancies. The sign tells them that there is a vacancy and that they should come looking. They are just doing a job, but most of us are too busy to be vigilant for every bit of flaking paint which may cause the over zealous inspector to cite you. In my experience they are not too troublesome and are pretty easy going except about the most egregious violation, but it is still better to stay under the radar.

Newspaper Ad

The effectiveness of an newspaper ad can be measured by the number of qualified leads, and how few unqualified leads.

In the ad, state geographical location, beds, baths, amenities, rent, who pays utilities, furnished or unfurnished (may be in ad category). Put in a hook like "Free credit report" or upgrade coming (fans, kitchen cabinets).

Sometimes whitespace can make an ad stand out.

Change the ad weekly so it looks fresh.

A split run is where every second paper has a different version of the ad, that way you can see which version works best. This works well with an internet ad service such as Adwords as well.

Section 8 and Public Housing.

Contact the local public housing authority if you are willing to take Section 8 tenants.

According to noted real estate investor and attorney William Bronchick, some states, such as California, Minnesota, and North Dakota, prohibit discrimination based on source of income - so you cannot discriminate against prospective tenants who rely on public assistance such as welfare or social security. Does this apply to Section 8 housing in those states? It is best to check before some miffed Section 8 tenant complains.

Military and college housing for rent

If near a military base, contact the housing office and use military papers. Colleges and Universities may also have a housing office.

You can also advertise in Motels or use Motel employees as finders as prospective tenants often stay there.

Rental Property Managers

These are licensed real estate agents who may have a pool of existing tenants, some who may want to move, and they should have prospective tenants from previous general inquiries. They also can take a lot of the marketing and tenant checking responsibilities out of your hands.

However, they can be very expensive and charge from 50% to 100% of the first month's rent as a finder's fee. There is the rare one who will charge nothing!

The Internet

One advantage of the world wide web is that its users tend to be more affluent and potentially a better class of tenant than those finding properties from street signs or newspapers. The response to your marketing efforts can be immediate too.

You can set up a sponsored search campaign such as Google's Adwords, or Yahoo's sponsored search. When someone searches for "St Petersburg FL apartment for rent" then your ad may appear on the page, if you have bid enough for its display. You don't actually pay unless the person searching for the property clicks on the ad (that is why it is called "Pay Per Click" or PPC. You can sign up for Adwords using the following button:

There are very many other paid and free avenues of marketing your rental property as well.

• Craigslist is one web site which allows free advertising to an educated target market.
• Myspace is another with currently a younger demographic.
• Google has currently entered the free classified market place with Google Base
• Backpage is an important Craigslist type site, but a little more commercially oriented
• Adpost allows free advertisement posting
• Penny Saver USA allows free ads to be posted on the internet, as well as providing a portal to place print ads as well. If you post here, your ad will go on The Flyer as well, as both publications are owned by the same company.
• There is one called Home Rental Store, but it is unknown what sort of traffic that they get.
• Inet Giant is another free classified service that may also sell lists of available homes to tenants.
• County Loop
• Oodle offers a number of ways to advertise your property, including Lycos Classifieds, Need 2 Lease and OLX.
• Outside of the USA, there is Kijiji, an eBay company analogous to Craigslist. It will probably be introduced to the US soon.
• Social networking sites Facebook and Friendster have also begun offering free classified ads.
• You could also place a video of your rental property on Youtube.
• In Florida, some Housing Authorities, such as those for Pinellas County and St Petersburg, have linked up with Florida Housing Search. This is a service allowing affordable housing to be advertised for free and found by prospective tenants. It  is a free resource where renters can find affordable properties, and landlords receive free listings. Either online or by phone at 877-428-8844, a number of helpful services are also available, such as a rental checklist, financial advice, and renter's rights and responsibilities.

If the local neighborhood association is well organized, then they may have a web site, and perhaps a forum where notices can be posted. The neighborhood I live in, Historic Kenwood, in St Petersburg, FL, has such a site.

Once you have gotten a pipeline of potential renters, you will move on to the next step, which is Renting the Home To Your Prospects

yahoorealestate.com	paid
zillow.com	free for sale ads
condominiums.com
condocompany.com
interinvestments.com
newcondosonline.com
move.com	post rental listings, but unknown if cost
trulia.com	sales
primemove.com	UK
propsmart.com	sales
viviun.com	International
rent.com
rentalo.com	vacation rentals