Scheduling conflicts and strategies for showing to prospective tenants

[Kosh Vokter]

I have a remote rental in B- neighborhood that's currently vacant. It takes 2 hours to get to the property, and so have a friend who lives like 30 minutes away from the rental assisting me with the showings for prospective tenants. 

I have had lots of challenges with prospective tenants who want to come for the viewing but would drop last minute due to some issues. I had to have my friend wait at the property at-least 4 different occasions on a different dates and time, only to be stood up and the tenants don't show up. I get all kinds of reasons like car broke down, 'caught-up' with something else last minute etc from tenants. 

I have considered scheduling an open house on a weekend, but there is no guarantee even that would work for all. Some of them say they work on weekends, or multiple shifts etc. I want to be respectful of their schedule and try and accommodate, but I can't also have my friend being stood-up every time. 

What other strategies do you employ for managing showings? 

[Kevin Sobilo]

@Kosh Vokter, I am local to my rentals and I had this issue when I first started myself.

I only do open house showings now. I don't even keep track of who said they will show up anymore. I don't do any pre-screening or require an application before showing so I treat open houses no-shows as people weeding themselves out of the process without me doing any work at all!

I typically get a healthy response for my rentals. Maybe 50-150 inquiries in the first week and 25-50 each week after that. So, I schedule 2 open houses per week. One mid week later in the day when day shift workers would be getting out of work 4-6pm or 5-7pm and the other one is on a weekend earlier in the day maybe 11am-1pm, 12-2pm or at latest 2-4pm depending on my own schedule. This I believe should allow 95% of people to attend one or the other.

Since I get such a healthy response, almost always do people show up to the open house. I've had a couple where people don't but that's life. I also don't make it wasted time as I plan small things to do while I'm there. Minor cleaning, touch-ups, lawn care, etc.

As I said, I don't even confirm appts for the open houses. If they DON'T show up, I consider that PRODUCTIVE because they have been weeded out as I'm there mowing the lawn and showing it to other people!