Strategy for high-end condo rental

[Leon Lee]

Hi, BPers

Currently I am living in a 2bed/2ba/1300 sqft luxury Condo and I have a roommate who is living in the guest bedroom. Now, I want to move to a SFH and rent out my master bath. The Zillow rental market value for the whole unit is $2300/month. I posted my ads to rent out the master suite for $1200 on craigslist and Zillow/Hotpods/Trulia for four days, but only got one inquiry. I had an open house but no one showed up. This has never happened to me on my other SFH rental properties, which usually attracted ~10 interested tenants for an open house session and ~20 email inquiries in a week.

The primary reason that I could think of is that few would probably spend $1200 on an apartment that they will have to share with someone else. But my current roommate is extremely considerate, although his rent is around $200 below the market value. 

So, my questions for the experienced landlords are:

(1) Is it common to have longer vacancy for rentals that are not targeting blue-collar families?

(2) Is the lack of privacy the main reason?

(3) What are your best strategies for the next move? reduce rent? ask my current roommate to move out and rent out the whole condo? 

He is on month-to-month, so there is no legal issue involved. However, I still hate to tell him that he needs to move out 30 days from now.  However, the mortgage for the condo is quite high and I need to get myself out of that as soon as possible. 

Thank you in advance!

Lee