Get more prospective tenants, faster with this one change

[William C.]

I want to share my experience and see what other landlords think about this epiphany I had today. When renovating units we always market our units online as soon as we have some reasonable photos to go along with the ad. Sometimes I'll even use another units bathroom given we use all of the same materials and the layout will only differ slightly. The point is to get interest as soon as possible by as many prospective tenants so we can have it filled with the best possible tenant as soon as the unit is ready. While non of this may seem like rocket science I wonder if others are doing the same thing? What I noticed today though, was sites like Craiglists and Zillow have a spot to fill in the availability date. Iv always put the date in which we expect to finish the unit. We always get those proactive tenants who are trying to do the right thing and start their search a few months early but we all know that an empty unit waiting for their preferred start date just won't cut it. So anyway over the past month or so I received about 10 inquiries into my unit. I blamed the low response on a number of market factors like time of year, the price, and the fact it's a 4 bedroom which has a smaller tenant pool. Low and behold today was the so called " available date" of my unit and in the past 24 hours I have received another 10 new inquiries into my unit. My thought is that tenant are seeing the available date and holding off on reaching out until the day is either closer or has already come. With that said, has anyone else noticed the same phenomenon? I only have a sample size of 2 units in the past 4 months but both times calls and emails picked up once the unit was "available". In the future I will certainly be using an available date of earlier rather than later. Iv found by prequalifying over the phone I'm able to weed out any tenants who would not be a good fit based on our application process, and we only need to show the unit to a few qualified, motivated tenants and we have the unit rented. Any input would be appreciated but I also wanted to share my experience in hopes to helping a landlord in the future rent their unit faster. I can't be the only one that sees every day on the calendar as a dollar amount and hope to have it filled the exact day the paint dries.