How to Get Tenants for Your Duplex or Rental Property
by
Jason Reed
Buy
How to find renters or tenants for your duplex, triplex or rental property
Here at the duplex doctors, we specialize in helping people buy and sell small multi family homes such as duplexes, triplexes and even quadplexes. There’s a number of reasons why these are such magical homes, but we could summarize it this way: your property produces rental income.
Rental property isn’t very helpful unless you actually have renters paying, so it’s incredibly useful to have some strategies and tactics to keep your vacancy rates low.
One thing they can make being a landlord a nightmare, is not placing great tenants in your properties. If you have an investment property and you’re looking to fill it with good, high-quality tenants, here are a couple of strategies that we recommend.
I’m going to speak a little bit about how to get tenants with the least amount of hassle for you as an owner, and trying to get tenants as fast as possible. Finding tenants is one thing that we often help our sellers, and buyers with. People struggle with this, and there are things that we have learned over our 20+ years in business. We’ll also touch briefly on the best process for acquiring your tenant/s.
What is the best place to find a renter for your rental property?
People are always wondering what the best place for finding a renter is. Is it a good idea to use Craigslist or should you use Zillow's tool? When looking for a tenant, our goal is to help people find the best high quality tenant/s with the least amount of their time invested. Years ago, people used to put a sign in front of the property or an ad in the newspaper. Then people moved to posting on Craigslist. Those methods have obviously gone by the wayside. What we are seeing now is that people have moved to Zillow for posting their needs for a tenant, and they have been very successful with that. That change just came about in the last couple of years and is knowledge that can be very helpful for property owners with vacancies to fill.
Tenant Application Requirements
Another thing that I would do, is state on the application what requirements you have of the tenant/s you’re looking for. This could include things like their credit score, and other pieces of their personal information. There are certain cities that have different policies in place with this, and that’s something you should check into beforehand; we can also help you with that.
Showing the Property
One other important thing that I would recommend is, instead of showing the property at the tenants request, set up the showing like an open house. Define a date and time, and tell the potential tenants to come during that window. It might seem like you may miss potential tenants by doing things this way but what we’ve actually found is that you get a number of groups in at that same time, which creates an urgency for those folks to rent and you end up with a number of people to choose from. It’s just a much better, more efficient way of doing it. When I started out I spent a lot of time going back and forth to rental properties to meet people on demand, taking every opportunity to show it. After the work of getting everything lined up and traveling to the property, people sometimes wouldn’t show up. By setting up an open house, if people don’t show up, you still have other groups that will. It’s no longer time wasted! The other positive is that your current tenants know “hey, from 2-4p on Saturday we should have the place cleaned up, and we won’t be there.” It makes the process a lot better. It makes the prospects feel a lot better too, when they show up and the tenant isn’t there and the place isn’t messy. It's just a better plan and way of doing things.
Acquiring tenants is just one of many items that we’ll help you with when you buy a duplex with us. Even if you don’t purchase with us feel free to call; we’re great when it comes to helping people with their variety of questions. I have people calling me all of the time that have purchased properties with other people, or bought from us a long time ago, and we’re willing to help anyone. You can also check out our website at www.theduplexdoctors.com or by calling us at 612-332-9000.