Our Property Management Insights

Any time you advertise a rental property online, there is a risk someone is using it to create a fraudulent listing or rental scam. While prospective tenants are the primary victims, there are real and serious consequences for your property management business as well.

Avoiding and quickly filling rental property vacancies is a crucial part of effective property management. Since the start of the pandemic, the rate that rental properties turn over each year has been averaging around 42%. Overall vacancy rates have fallen somewhat in recent months, with the current national rental vacancy rate standing at 5.6%.

It’s been reported that as little as 10% of potential tenants that are actually qualified for a property they’re interested in will show up to their viewing appointment and will submit a complete and accurate application. The odds are stacked against property managers right from the start. This means that thorough tenant screening is critical to finding quality tenants.

Today’s rental market is much more competitive than in the past. While it’s a property manager’s market, that doesn’t mean you can take your tenant leads for granted. Renters know they need to act quickly, and you need to get the best tenants possible. That means you don’t have the luxury of losing prospects to other rental properties. Quality tenant prospects are the first ones to go off the market, and it’s frustrating to lose top quality tenants to other properties. You can reduce the number of lost prospects if you know why tenants choose other properties over your own. Here are the top reasons we’ve discovered as we look at the data.

You probably already know how important Zillow is as a listing site for marketing your rental property. The Zillow Group is composed of some of the biggest names in rental listing sites: Zillow, Trulia and HotPads. With its vast inventory of homes and abundance of tenant lead traffic, it's easy to see why Zillow has been called the best rental property listings site of 2021. But how do you get the most bang for your buck from Zillow, especially when nearly every property manager is using those same resources you are?

Another property just emptied and you need to fill it fast. You have your go-to websites to advertise your rental properties, but no way to know how much they’re helping you to attract prospective tenants. Could you get better results (and better tenants) from other rental websites? Are you getting the biggest bang for your buck from paid websites?

If you’re going to fill your rental vacancies fast — and with quality tenants — you have to invest in online marketing and advertising. But with so many possible tactics to advertise your property, how do you determine which methods are worth the investment?