Advertising for a unit while remodeling?

[Mark Douglas]

I'm a few weeks from finishing a unit (almost a complete gut job, took longer than I'd planned!).  Should I just wait till it's completely finished to start advertising on Realtor, Zillow, etc?  I want to include photos with the ad, but I've seen some new construction apts going up that start taking applications before the building is completed.

Pros and cons?  Does the pool of applications seem better overall when there are photos?

Thanks !

[JD Martin]

Originally posted by @Mark Douglas:

I'm a few weeks from finishing a unit (almost a complete gut job, took longer than I'd planned!).  Should I just wait till it's completely finished to start advertising on Realtor, Zillow, etc?  I want to include photos with the ad, but I've seen some new construction apts going up that start taking applications before the building is completed.

Pros and cons?  Does the pool of applications seem better overall when there are photos?

Thanks !

 Overall, my experience is that tenants have very little vision of "what it's going to be", so unless you are substantially done - kitchen, bathrooms, flooring in; paint on the walls; all major construction finished - I would wait. We have successfully rented out places that were almost done, but the places that still had major work going on, no one even bothered submitting an application. 

The other part of that is that, invariably, every place that's "almost done" ends up having some hangup that screws up the timeline, and then we are scrambling to find alternative contractors, materials, do the work ourselves, etc. Just finished up a house last month that had a tenant approved and lease signed in August that had to be cancelled & refunded at the applicant's request, because there was a major snag in the flooring order and it ended up being delayed by weeks.