Your Rental Property Isn't Getting Tenants? Here's Why

Why is my house not renting? Boy, this is a question we get periodically. And it's a question that we're asking ourselves every day that we're trying to get things rented quicker and quicker and quicker, especially during the, the down times in the market. Certainly during this time of the year, the holiday season, things really slow down and it makes it more challenging. Not a lot of people are moving around. Not a lot of people are renting units. So If your rental property isn't getting showings or applications, it's easy to assume you need better photos, a premium listing, maybe even an expensive video tour. But the truth is those things rarely fix the real problem. Let me walk you through what actually matters and what we do differently to get homes rented faster. So first off, yes, photos do matter, but they're not usually the whole issue. And not only photos, but videos, and videos I think are better, Let's start with the obvious. Most renters find every rental they look at online. So yes, photos matter, but there's also bad lighting, crooked shots, clutter. Those things absolutely hurt your results. But here's the twist. If your photos are decent, they're almost never the reason your home isn't getting traction. They don't always have to be just top-notch professional videos. They just have to be adequate. But why expensive video tours? Aren't the magic fix. Do they look nice? Can they help? Absolutely. But there's, you know, a limit or a diminishing return on your investment. So maybe for the high-end premium listings, yeah, those things might even require it. So property owners often ask if a professional video tour will finally get their place rented. And while video can be nice, it's not the problem 95% of the time. Renters don't choose a home because the listing came with a cinematic drone clip. Uh, they, they chose based on price and then condition, the overall layout and the location, probably in that order. Video tours won't fix a pricing mismatch. They won't fix competing inventory. And that's really the big one. I mean, if you pull up a Zillow map and you put your address, your rental address in there, and you see all the pins and you go, oh, there's a ton of things. For rent right in that same neighborhood, you're gonna have some competition, some work cut out for you. And so they won't fix market timing. So no, you don't need to spend hundreds on video, although it does help. I don't know that it's always gonna be the best investment of your time and your money. What about premium ads? Are they worth it? Well, sometimes, uh, sometimes it can make the difference, but again weighing the cost with the benefit. So another misconception is maybe if we just pay to boost the listing, it'll rent. Well, in reality, premium ads rarely move the needle if the home isn't already attractive to renters at its price point. Boosting it just pushes the same ineffective listing in front of more people. It doesn't solve the underlying issue. Number 4, so what we actually do to fix the problem. Here's where professional property management makes a difference. Instead of guessing or throwing money at upgrades, we use a systematic, data-proven approach to diagnose what really is happening, what's really going on. First, you want to take a look at the property and make sure that it's showing well, it looks well, it smells well, it's presented well, all of those things. And So starting at the beginning, super important. As a professional property management, we list on all major rental sites. So of course, Zillow and Trulia, HotPads, Apartments.com, Zumper, and we use a whole bunch of other sites and places to be found. And these have changed over the last 20 years. We still use Craigslist periodically. And knowing where to post is gonna really help you get the exposure that you need to get the leads and the traffic and ultimately to get your property rented in a timely manner. Also, we track and review lead traffic. So if you're not doing that, it's— that's gonna help. It's gonna help you ask the questions if you need to tweak anything or change anything. So paying attention to the lead traffic on your listing. Are people clicking? So once they find your listing, are they actually checking it out? Are they saving the listing? Are they inquiring? All of that traffic tells a story, and we read that data daily. We analyze the ad itself. Is the description clear? Is the title compelling? Does it need to be switched up and tweaked again? Are photos arranged correctly? Is it presented well? Does the listing showcase the right features? All those small things matter. We compare pricing to live market conditions, not last year's rent, not the owner's desired rent, but today's market. We review comps and evaluate where your home sits relative to similar options. We monitor renter feedback, super important. If 5 people say the bedrooms feel small, boy, that's a pattern. If they tell us that there's a funky smell going on, if every prospect mentions a place down the street that's $150 cheaper, we need to adjust. We consider economic conditions and seasonality. Winter equals slower traffic. Summer is usually the peak season. You got to take advantage of it. Layoffs, interest rates, college schedules, they all influence demand. And yes, we literally map out the competition. We use the Zillow map and other software and technology to analyze how many competing rentals are within a mile or in that neighborhood, that, that vicinity of your other, your rental. If you're one of the 19 similar properties or more, and you don't have a marketing problem, you know, there's challenge there. You have to be able to stand out. You have to have a compelling reason for people to choose your product over someone else's. You have a supply versus demand problem, and we want you to strategize accordingly. That's what we do. So number 5, price is the biggest lever, but it's not the first lever, right? It's not the first lever that you should push, but it is the biggest. Like, you start adjusting the price, that is when it should move the market. All other things considered, if you've got a decent product, you're advertising it well, doing a price adjustment, boy, that really changed the game quickly. So now here's the truth many owners don't want to hear. Price is the most powerful factor in renting a home, but we don't jump to dropping rent immediately. First, we optimize, want to make sure that we do have good photos, good marketing exposure, that the listing is professional and well done. Good showing availability. We've— we're tracking the leads. We've got feedback loops coming back from anybody that's checking out the property, ourselves included, evaluating the property. And so only after all that, after reviewing the market conditions, do we look at a strategic price adjustment. And we're all— we're doing all that within minutes, hours, or days. And when we do, it usually works fast. But again, there's challenges. You know, you sometimes you're just getting crickets during the winter season or when there's economic cycles that are on the downslope. So why our homes rent faster? All of this is why our average days on market is consistently lower than our competitors. Not because we buy premium listing packages, not because we throw money at ads, but because we use data. We listen to the market, we evaluate the competition, and we respond quickly. And we advise our clients to listen to our feedback. And we follow that proven system, and it works. That's how we rent homes faster and keep your vacancy costs as low as possible. If your rental isn't getting the attention you expected, it's probably not your photos, and you definitely don't need expensive upgrades. You need a process, a strategy. And someone analyzing the data behind the scenes. If you want help getting your rental moving, give us a call today. Thanks for watching.