college area, tenant leaves in the middle of school year

[Jin Kim]

This tenant (@ 1 bedroom and 1bath) gave me a notice that he will leave at the end of this month. He is a post doc researcher, makes 30,000 annually after tax, wants to move to 2 bedroom apt and share with his friend to save rent.

I found that it's difficult to find a tenant right now. All the prospectives are picky and they a lot of times disappear even before visiting the place. Currently 1 bedroom rent is $2000 (Berkeley). How much should I go down to fill up the place? Is there any other ways I can attract more leads? is there a lot of move around xmas time as they want to move to somewhere else for next semester?

And even after we find next tenant, I want to be preemptive, not to look for tenant in the middle of school year again. How can we make them leave when school starts again? I'd like to do year to year only, but I am not sure if this can be too much that I can't even find a tenant right now.