Best way and day to show a rental property

[Bobby H.]

Please advise on the best way to actually do a rental property showing. I read in a book one time that the best day of the week to show a rental in on Saturday morning at 7:30am. The reason being is because all the drunken party animals will still be in bed and are not responsible enough to wake up and go see a property so earl. In having iit at 7:30 am, you will screen out 90% of all the undesirable tenants who party hard and are irresponsible, whereas anyone who will wake up that early will be a very responsible tenant who can rent long-term. 

Also, do you do a one-on-one showing, or do you have multiple applicants show up all at once so there is a feeling of competition in the air, which is good for the landlord.  Please advise, and thanks in advance for all the awesome answers I know you'll be sending my way!

[Joe Villeneuve]

Here's another issue...and a possible solution.  What happens when you can't make schedules work, or you end up stretching out the scheduled showing to that famous "later date", or when (this is pretty common) you have to keep making trips out to do showings only to end up with no shows. late shows, or overlapping shows?

The solution I found, thanks to my Architectural background, is to do virtual walkthroughs  of all my rentals.  this allows me to do preliminary showings without having to schedule anything, meaning:

1 - no lates, 

2 -no shows, 

3 - no overlapping showings

4 - immediate showings.

I have a questionnaire at the end with a part asking for a formal showing (if they're interested).  This also puts all those that watched on a tenant mailing list for future open/vacancies.  Works great.