Kaitlyn and Chris Sonino explain how to lease rental properties during winter and the slow season from mid-October through mid-February. They recommend modest rent concessions, keeping utilities on, and offering move-in incentives like gift cards to attract tenants when cold weather and holidays reduce renter mobility.
Hi, guys. Kaitlyn here. Welcome back to another episode on our Freedom vlog. I am with Chris Sonino, our senior property manager, asset manager, along with some other titles. And today we're going to be talking about how to lease your property during the cooler winter months. I believe I said this was episode 79, is that right? I think so. 79.
Do you want to start Vlog 93?
Oh, sugar. The podcast that relates to this, I think is 73. So, yeah, we're just going to keep going. It's been a busy week.
Oh, man. Busy Tuesday. Yeah. Yeah. So renting properties in the wintertime. So in Independence Property management, it's an interesting thing because we had to, like, take into account what are best for our clients while also trying to figure out how to optimize marketing in a period of time when a lot of people are trying to just stay put.
Yes.
For the holidays, actually, believe it or not, it's actually more the holidays than the cold weather in Ohio.
Yeah.
There are some areas are like the winter is like in March.
True.
So it's more so the holidays. For us, it is actually the cold weather. It just happens to coincide, so we just chalk it up to cold weather. But I think it's more so people just want to stay put for their family events and things. And then it kind of trickles. Just so everybody knows it's kind of like middle to end of October through, like February, February, mid February. Yeah. So we're dealing with a solid three and a half to four months of slower market conditions when it comes to renting.
Yeah, absolutely. You brought up a really good point about the holidays because not only in regards to, like, families and things like that, but also spending. They aren't wanting. They're wanting to put their monies towards gifting or maybe supplying a nice dinner on the table for Thanksgiving or what have you other holidays to follow. So that was a good point to bring up.
Yeah.
What's one piece of advice that you can give our listeners for at least a vlog?
Yeah, the big piece of advice I'd probably offer is think outside the box.
Okay.
You know, where normally we might be aggressive for rent, you may want to secede on rent a little bit.
Yes.
Where we may want to keep utilities limited. You might want to keep utilities on. And we'll kind of go into the details of why.
Absolutely.
And then the big one is just like, it's a giving season. Be a little bit more giving in how we present these things. So you may incentivize, move ins a little bit more. You may offer a little bit of a like gift card situation or something to put a little bit more money back into the renters hands as they move in and they literally uproot their lives and start over somewhere new.
You know, that's also, you know, just as advice and experience and everything. You know, don't limit that to just like to for marketing a property. You know, maybe extend that out to your current residence if you have any other residents because that can lead to other ways of getting your property lease, which we will touch on more depth. Yeah, so definitely, you know, think about that too because you know, word of mouth can go a long way and that's going. That can very likely affect the longevity of how long that resident's there. You know, all on how you care for them.
Yeah, that first few weeks to few months, the few interactions we have leading up to somebody moving in really sets the tone to how their entire experience is going to go. And I will tell you that some of our best tenants are the ones that have lived there the longest are the ones that had the best move in process. So yeah, it's definitely something we're attentive to, but more so specifically watch during the winter months.
Absolutely. Well, I'm excited to get into this on our podcast. That will be episode 93 97. I don't remember anymore, but it is upcoming so we will dive deeper into these topic matters as well as additional ones and different ideas and maybe why you should or maybe you shouldn't do some other things. So we always like to end these with invest smart and live happy. Bye guys.
Bye.
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