How to Market Your Rental Property Risk Free

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By charlesroach
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Market Your Rental Property Risk Free

In this article, you will learn how to market and advertise your rental property(ies) without any risk to your advertising budget.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Computer
Calculator
Camera/Digital Photos
Rental Property
Internet

Step 1

Pinpoint the demographic that you want to market your property to. Will college students live there? Is this a single family rental property? Understanding the likes and dislikes of your potential renters is crucial in finding a right fit for your property's new residents.
Step 2

Take clean, well lit digital photos of your rental property. For indoor photos, furniture and decor that fits your target demographic is a great idea. It's easier to attract attention to a well designed space than to a vacant room. Take outdoor photos in the early morning, at noon, or as the sun is going down to ensure there are no shadows across the building. Lighting is very important; the property needs to look inviting, even from someone's computer screen. Finally, outdoor photos are best taken in the fall when leaves are changing colors or in the spring when everything's in bloom.
Step 3

Find a good pay-per-lease program. These programs enable you to advertise your property on sophisticated advertising mediums (internet, newsletters, e-mail blasts, search engines, etc) without any upfront costs. The property manager will only pay a fee when a lease is signed, thus marketing your property risk free. I recommend www.listingtank.com. Their website looks great and you can add rewards to rank your property higher than the competition. It's easy to use and they do a great job in making your property the focus instead of some random ad space.
Step 4

Determine your Listed Rental Rate. Finding comparable properties and adjusting your price according to differing features is a great way to do this. As an example, let's use $1000/month.
Step 5

Predict your Vacancy Loss. If you have someone renting your property now, most likely, they will leave within 1 or 2 years. After they leave, there's usually a vacancy period where the property will lie dormant without anyone living in it. It could be 1 week or 4 months. Finding comparable properties and simply asking their managers is a good way of determining this $ amount. As an example, let's use a vacancy of 2 months, which amounts to $2000.
Step 6

Find your Bottom Line Price. How much are you willing to drop your price to fill up your vacancy? For example, if you were advertising an apartment for rent at $1000/month for a 12 month lease, and someone offered $950, would you take it? Let's say as an example your Bottom Line Price is $950. The difference is $50 per month or $600 per year.
Step 7

Calculate your Advertising Expenses. This is usually a percentage of your Potential Gross Income (PGI). Most property managers use 5% of their PGI for advertising. Let's say you're renting a property for $1000/month for 12 months. Your PGI would be $12,000. Your Advertising Expenses at 5% of PGI would be $600/year.
Step 8

Calculate your Marketing Incentives. If you were to only market your property with no risk pay-per-lease advertising programs, worst case scenario would be: PGI ($12,000/yr) - Vacancy Loss ($2000/yr) - Bottom Line Difference ($600/yr) - Advertising Expenses ($600/yr) = $8,800 per year. Subtract the worse case scenario ($8,800) from the best case scenario ($12,000) to find your Marketing Incentive of $3,200.
Step 9

Calculate your pay-per-lease Success Fee. These fees are sometimes fixed or a percentage of incentives offered. At ListingTank.com, the Success Fee is a fixed $100 for each lease signed.
Step 10

Sign up with the pay-per-lease program and upload details about your property, floor plans, attachments, contact information, and photos.
Step 11

Offer your Incentives with the pay-per-lease program. The Incentives should be the Marketing Incentive ($3,200) minus the pay-per-lease Success Fee ($100) = $3,100. If you are using a pay-per-lease program AND other advertising mediums and/or incentives, calculate your Incentives by adding the Advertising Expense per year and Bottom Line Difference per year.