Finding good tenants starts with having a good place to rent to them. Even in a bad part of town, no decent person is going to live in a bad place (at least not for very long). When I was doing contracting work for other property owners I did some business for this one company that owned a couple of hundred apartments in a so-so part of Baltimore. They would vacate/evict the tenant on Monday & have the unit turned over and ready for a new tenant to move in by that weekend. On the phone I marveled at their efficiency & imagined what great systems they must have in place to keep their operation running so smoothly.
I soon discovered how smooth they really were. The apartment I committed to get ready for them was absolutely disgusting. I wouldn't let my dog spend the night in there let alone someone's family. There was mold on the walls and the bathroom was filthy. The only work I agreed to do was replace the kitchen countertop, replace a few broken doors and some other light punch-out work. By Friday they had their painter come in and spray a thick coat of cheap paint right over the mold & grime.
That was the only job I did for those people. They were truly slumlords and I wanted no part of that shoddy business.
I never show a vacant apartment to a prospective tenant until it has been painted & cleaned. Don't show a rundown unit to someone & then tell them how you're going to fix it up. Always do the work first, make it presentable, then bring them in. You can't expect a tenant to have a 'vision' of what the place will look like after it's fixed up. Remember, the crummy tenants will take anything. I once had a girl tell me over the phone that she needed a place immediately & she didn't care if there were holes in the walls or if the apartment was a total wreck. I politely told her I couldn't help her and hung up the phone. What kind of renter do you think she would've been? Always paying on time? No problems? I would've gotten a security deposit and first month's rent and then be fighting to get her out.
Good places attract good tenants. Bad places attract bad tenants. It's pretty simple.
If you ever purchase a multi-unit building with a few bad tenants you should work to get them out as soon as possible. I call it re-tenanting a building. You cycle out the bad and bring in the good. Your good tenants won't put up with crazy behavior and late night loudness; they'll simply move out without notice one weekend and leave you scratching your head. Better to be proactive & let your good tenants know your on top of the situation rather than let them slip away.
So you've got a decent place & it's ready to be rented. You didn't go overboard on expensive countertops and imported ceramic tile. It's clean, sanitary and presentable. You could give the keys to someone & they could move in that night.
So now you're ready to put a For Rent sign in the window, right?
Wrong.
Okay, how about a long winded ad in the paper with your phone number in big letters so you get lots of calls?
Wrong again.
I've used both of these marketing techniques and they stink. All you get is your voicemail filled with tire-kickers wanting more information. Ever try returning 45 phone calls after dinner? But wait, it gets even more fun because after you've returned all those calls you now have a dozen or so that want to see the apartment. So now you're juggling your schedule and running over to the property at different times to show the unit. And the best part- half of the time they don't even show up. They don't even call you on your cell to say they're not coming.
Out of frustration I came up with a rarely used technique to show an apartment according to my schedule. I put an ad in the Sunday edition of the paper under the Real Estate for Rent section like this:
Open House!
Baltimore- 618 Waverly St. Open
Tuesday 7/3 @ 5:00pm. Nice 2 BD,
1 BA. 0/month + sec. dep.
Notice that there's no phone number. Notice that I didn't put between 5:00 and 7:00pm. You can add more of a description, but I like to keep it simple & clean. I used to use Monday @ 5:00pm but I found that many people don't get around to actually reading their Sunday paper until Monday. So doing it Tuesday gives them a little extra time to re-arrange their schedule so that they can make it.
I've used this ad hundreds of times and it works. I might have to do an open house a few weeks in a row, but it still beats the heck out of all that wasted time on the phone. Also, this ad helps weed out all of the tire-kickers! If someone is serious about renting a place, they will come to the open house on time and be anxious to get it. I usually get less than a dozen people at my open houses. Some walk through quickly and leave, some ask a few questions and leave, and a few more ask for an application and fill it out on the spot.
Using this technique will save you a ton of headaches. You don't want volume. You want quality. Having 90 people respond to your sign & ad with phone calls may sound great to a novice, but I'd much rather spend a half hour of my time with a targeted gathering of prospective tenants. An added benefit when you acquire more buildings is that you can direct someone to the right place for them. They may not like the apartment your showing right now, but the apartment being vacated in another building at the end of the month may be perfect for them.
As any good salesman will tell you, it's all about getting qualified leads. I've rented apartments a week before Christmas & remember people telling me beforehand that nobody would show up. If you have a decent place, they will come. There will always be exceptions; bad weather, lull in the rental market, etc. But in good parts of town and bad, this advertising system has proven itself. It works.
