How far in advance should I advertise for my rental

[Corey Pascuzzi]

I just closed on my first single family rental last week. I have some work to do inside and am planning to have it ready to rent by April 1st. When should I start advertising, now or in a couple of weeks when it is in better shape to show? A better question might be, how long does the screening process usually take? Thanks!

[Robert Steele]

First impressions count.

If the outside looks nice go ahead and advertise when it will be available. But don't do any showings until the inside is ready.

Let me use a simple example.

Right at this moment in time there is a fixed pool of potential tenants that would consider your property because it is in the location that they want and within the price range that they can afford.

Let's just say it is 30. If you show it now in crappy condition you burn all 30 of them. Then you have to wait for new potential tenants to trickle into the market. Let's also say that this occurs at the rate of 1 potential tenant per day. By listing 2 weeks early you lost 30 potential tenants and now have 15 potential at the most. If you just waited until it was ready you would have 30 potential tenants. Of course this is oversimplified and different numbers will give different results but you get the gist.