How to Advertise Rental Property and Where – for Columbus, OH Investors

When you think about how to advertise rental property, you need to remember that people these days are shopping online for goods and services. If they don’t find what they want or get their questions answered, they’ll move on quickly. Today, we’re addressing some questions we commonly get from owners about how and where to advertise.

How to List My Property for Rent

We feel it’s best to be transparent in our advertising about what we’re looking for in a tenant. That gives us better, faster results. By providing comprehensive advertising, we can eliminate some of those people who are not going to qualify for our properties. So, we provide minimum qualifications in our advertising. Some of those include no evictions, proof of income, the requirement that tenants pay for utilities, the requirement that renter’s insurance is purchased, the security deposit amount, and the contact information for the last three landlord references. We indicate whether Section 8 is permitted and whether pets will be considered. We also tell tenants they are responsible for verifying the school district. The list can go on, and it depends on your criteria. Don’t violate any fair housing laws. We always put the fair housing logo on our advertising.

You would think that with all this criteria, we’d have no phone calls. However, we get 200 or 300 inquiries on every ad we run. We still get people who do not qualify, and our job is to sift through all the inquiries and find the people who meet the criteria.

List Property for Rent with Pictures

High quality pictures are critical because people want to see the property before they go to it. No one wants to waste time. We take a lot of quality pictures of all the rooms in the house. We include basements, exterior pictures, and even pictures of the street. Open the blinds and turn on the lights before you take photos. If you’re taking a picture of the bathroom, make sure you close the toilet lid.

Don’t take pictures of incomplete work. Tenants will pass if there is work that needs to get done. When the home is 100 percent ready, take your pictures and put it on the internet. Your ad is written.

Where to Advertise

We use over 20 different websites to advertise property. We get a volume discount from advertising sites, but you can use platforms like Craigslist, Zillow, and Apartments.com. Some local newspapers also have websites for rentals. Put a sign at the property. We usually post one in the window instead of the yard so we aren’t letting everyone know the property is empty.

If you’re having trouble with advertising and you need to find a tenant, try these tips. Remember to respond to inquiries quickly. If they don’t get an answer from you, good tenants will move on to the next property.

Please contact us at Solutions for Real Estate if you have any questions about property management in Columbus.

Property Management Blog