In this video blog, Mendell Gosnell of Centurion Real Estate Management explains how property owners and investors can determine the appropriate rent for a house or apartment. He emphasizes that rental pricing is highly dependent on the local market and can vary even between adjacent neighborhoods. Key determinants include location, curb appeal, and amenities such as modern appliances, granite countertops, fenced yards, pools, and proximity to parks and high‑quality schools. Gosnell stresses that a good property‑management firm adds value by staying current on market trends, minimizing vacancy time, and using a blend of public data (Craigslist, Zillow, yard signs) and proprietary software to set competitive rates. He warns against overpricing, which leads to prolonged vacancies and added costs, and advises owners to ensure strong marketing—high‑quality photos, multiple listing platforms, and clear ads. The video concludes with a call to action to contact Centurion for management services and a friendly sign‑off encouraging investors to “leave the management to us.”
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What can my house rent for? That's what we're going to talk about today in this video blog. This is the second most asked question that me or my staff get on a regular basis from owners, investors that are calling our company inquiring about management services. First, it's important to remember that the answer to this question is depends. Depends on the market, and it's also very geographically location sensitive, even from sometimes one neighborhood to the next within, you know, the same city and across the river or across a creek or um, across the tracks. But within a geographical location of similar apartments or similar houses for rent, there are things that can affect how much rent you can expect to get. Curb appeal, the amenities that you are offering, whether you have a dishwasher or garbage disposal or granite countertops, fresh paint, fenced backyard, all new appliances, stainless steel appliances, or whatever the latest greatest amenities that tenants or renters can't live without. Pool house, common area, close to parks, proximity to good quality schools. That's going to be consistent, huge driver of value in determining how much you can get for rent for your property. A good property management company is going to help drive a lot of value for you, the investor, client, owner of rental property, in that they're going to be able to stay up with the current trends in the market and renting a lot of units on a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly basis. So they're going to know when things are going up, going down, staying still, going sideways, and be able to maximize the value and get the max amount of rent. At our company, Centurion Real Estate Management, what we look at is getting the best tenant in the least amount of time to pay the most amount of rent. And so it's a balancing act. You can try and get what you think is top dollar or market rent, but if your apartment or house is sitting vacant for a prolonged period, you're incurring a huge opportunity cost. Additional costs, paying for the utilities while it sits vacant. Renting it in a timely manner is hugely important. Again, curb appeal, the first thing that the tenants see when they check out your house or apartment, is really going to be huge in the determining factor of them wanting to rent there and how much they're willing to pay, how much they determine the value of that property is. In the competitive market. So again, knowing what the market is, is gonna really help in fine-tuning how much you can get out of rent. There's a lot of different sources out there help determine what the best rental price is gonna be, like Craigslist and Zillow and a host of other internet marketing sites. Yard signs in the area. Here at Centurion, we use all of those and more. We have proprietary software that we use in-house, accounting or property management software that gives us insight into some of the rent amounts in the area, and we pay for information from various associations and firms that track the local markets. And we rent a lot of units on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis, and so we know what the rent— rental market is, and we have a large portfolio of properties that we can compare and know fairly quickly what the rental range is gonna be. If something's not renting and it's clean, safe, and habitable, and in an okay location or desirable market, uh, it— you probably are just overpriced or Check your, check your marketing. Make sure that you're, you've got a good ad, good pictures, and you're putting it out on several different mediums. All those are factors to take into account when renting a unit and go into understanding how much you can charge or expect to get for your investment property. That's it. So I hope that was helpful and informational. If you have other questions, feel free to give our firm a call or check us out on the web at www.c-rem.com. And as we like to say around here, enjoy life and leave the management to us. And happy investing.
