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rental properies is a great source of primary or additional income. However, when your house or apartment property becomes vacant you need to act swiftly in order to move a new tenant into the unit. These following tips and hints will help you rent out your property quickly and easily.
List your property
Your rental unit should be listed as soon as it becomes empty, unless you have major repair work to do after a move out. The following list contains a few places you can list your property.
- Newspaper classified ad
- Internet listing (craigslist.com)
- Posting on a bulletin board
- Word of mouth
- Tenant referrals (Give incentives to current tenants if they find you a new qualified tenant)
Make Appointments to Show the Apartment
If all goes to plan the above listings should produce phone calls or emails from people looking to find out more information about your property. You should already have a date and time set aside to show the apartment, typically on a Saturday or Sunday when people are not working. Give everyone the same time to see the apartment or if you want, stagger the appointments by a half hour. This insures that you do not have to drive to the apartment every time someone would like to see it. It also eliminates the chance of a person failing to show up for an appointment and you wasting your time waiting for them.
Scheduling multiple appointments the same day also instills a sense of urgency in the people checking out the property. If they see that other people are also looking at it, they know that they may have to act quickly to sign a lease or come up with a down payment. If they have a feeling that your apartment has little or no interest in it, they may try to haggle on price, drag their feet on down payments or talk you into something you were not willing to do (accept pets, allow smoking etc).
Before your appointments arrive you should list all of good features of your apartment, in your head preferably. Think of all of the things that would make someone happy to live there. Also be prepared to answer any questions about things that your unit does not provide. For instance, if someone says "So if I move in here I have to pay water and electric? I didn't have to do that at my other place". Have a response planned for questions like this, say something like "Well in my apartments, my tenants do have to pay those utilities but I have installed electric heaters to keep natural gas prices down, energy efficient light bulbs and water saving toilets and shower heads."
Renting out your apartment is just like selling something, which I think most of us can do. As long as this apartment isn't in the slums or completely rundown there should be multiple features and benefits that you can tell your future tenants about. Here is a list of everything I told my tenants about my first duplex property.
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There are attached garages in the middle of the unit so there is no chance of being annoyed by a noisy tenant next door.
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There is no furnace, but there are electric heaters in each room which you can simply turn on when you enter a room. Therefore there are no gas bills and the electric bill is usually never over 150 dollars a month.
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I plan on landscaping the duplex in the spring so you will have new trees, plants and flowers in front of your apartment.
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The previous landlord here made the tenants cut the grass and pick up the leaves; however I will do that for you when you move into the apartment.
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I updated all of the plumbing in the kitchen and bathrooms so you should have no problem with water leaks.
I'm sure that your unit has a lot of amenities that you can mention to tenants during the walkthrough similar to the ones above. Once the tenant is hooked, get them to fill out an application.
Filling Out an Application
This is one of the simplest parts of the rental process. You can download rental applications online or you can get them from your local landlord's association. Usually you will be running these applications through an agency or background check to make sure your tenants qualify to rent your apartment. If you are going to be charged for this verification, you may want to pass that cost onto the person filling out the application. There are advantages and disadvantages to this.
Advantages
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It weeds out people who really are not interested in your apartment
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It makes them think twice if they know they are not qualified, which won't waste your time
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They know by being charged for an application that you understand how to be a landlord and deal with tenants
Disadvantages
I always offer my tenants the money back for the application if they are approved for the apartment and make a down payment. Usually I only end up running applications on the people who are most interested in the apartment. If I do end up taking two or three payments for the applications I tend to refund everyone's money back who did qualify and was not able to rent the apartment due to the order in which the applications were verified (you legally have to rent to the first tenant who is approved and pays the down payment).
Leases
Finding a lease that suits your apartment should not be hard. There are leases available for download on the Internet, from landlord associations, real estate agents and in books and newsletters.
Make sure you add addendums to your lease for things not listed. Listed below are things that I added onto my lease.
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No garage sales or cars for sale on the property without my permission
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Do not tape posters, pictures or anything else to walls
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Tenants are responsible for snow and ice removal from their side of the duplex
Make sure your lease has the following:
When the tenant signs a lease it is always a good idea to do a walkthrough with them again. This time, take note of items in each room and their condition, also known as an inventory checklist. This protects them from being blamed for damage caused prior to them living there. It also reminds you what was in each room and should remain in each room when the tenant moves out (ex. mini blinds, throw rugs, appliances, etc).
Have the tenant sign two leases and two inventory checklists. This allows them to keep one copy and refer to it as needed. The other copy should be kept by the landlord in a safe place.
Typically a down payment of a security deposit is taken in the amount of one month's rent prior to signing a lease. At the time the lease is signed you may collect the pro-rated amount for the first month's rent.
Congratulations you just rented your apartment! I hope these steps were easy to follow and helpful to all who have read them.
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