REI – Observations on Finding Tenants

Hello there, trusted reader! This week I am going to discuss a few observations I have made on the subject of finding tenants for my rentals.

As discussed in a previous post, we purchased another rental in December. Before the purchase was final, we started advertising it for rent. We listed it with a couple of different syndication services, Put a “For Rent” sign in front of the property, and posted it in pretty much every local and/or rental-related group on Facebook, in addition to posting it on our Facebook business page.

Syndicated Listings

Cozy.co

The property was listed on Cozy.co because we are evaluating their service for application, rental payment, and other tools that assist property manager.

The set up was easy and they list the rental as available on their site, in addition to syndicating the listing to Doorsteps.com and Realtor.com.

Cozy also offers one of the top-rate low-cost online rental payment platforms, based on reviews & comparisons. If tenants use the ACH (Automated Clearing House) option, payments are free. They also have the option to use a credit card to pay, but add a small percentage service fee. I have not implemented it in our business yet, as our tenants are more comfortable paying with checks and money orders.

In addition to the online rental payment system, Cozy provides an online maintenance request system, tenant screening, and document sharing with tenants. The maintenance request platform is only available if you are already using their online payments. The tenant screening offers options for background checks and credit reports, at no cost to the property manager, due to the tenant paying these fees. The document sharing is the equivalent of a shared drive to upload leases and any other documents for tenants.

Cozy Syndication

From our experience, neither the Cozy listing, nor the syndication partners are popular in our area for attracting potential tenants. People looking for places to rent don’t seem to frequent these sites.

Zillow Rental Manager

Zillow offers a similar set of services, excluding the maintenance requests and document sharing. They provide tenant screening and online rental payments, similar to Cozy. Where they really shine is the listing syndication. Zillow lists rentals on Zillow.com, but since it also owns Trulia.com and Hotpads.com, it syndicates listings on those sites simultaneously.

For this recent property we had issues getting the rental listing to be accepted by Zillow due to it still being listed for sale on Zillow when we first put it up for rent, but it syndicated to Trulia and Hotpads just fine. We received quite a few inquiries from these sources.

Facebook Groups/Facebook Business Page

Facebook seems to be the hands-down winner for attracting prospective tenants. We ultimately received more inquiries from Facebook than any other advertising channel that we used. It involved a little work…there are a lot of groups! I will post a detailed methodology on that some day. It is kind of interesting.

I created a video of pictures from the home and a digital flyer that was shared on and from our Facebook business page. The flyer listed the location, rental rate, the lease length, and basic restrictions (No smoking, some pets allowed). This helped to attract interested inquiries and potentially screen out anyone not interested in what we had to offer.

Traditional Advertising Channels

If you haven’t noticed yet, the only cost of the methods we utilized was a “For Rent” sign. Ads in the local newspapers cost too much, plus we have much better circulation on the channels we do use. That is why we don’t even bother to list anything in the with the papers.

If you have rentals, what do you use to attract prospective tenants? Leave me a message in the comments or email me at clint.galliano+ObservationsFindingTenants@gmail.com.

And, as always, let me know what you think in the comments. Ask questions, tell your story.

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