KCMO Rental Listing Advice

[Robert DeForge]

Hey Fellow BPers I'm hoping I can get some feedback on our rental listing. I have a 4 bedroom 1 bath rental in the Northlands that we've been trying to rent for a couple months now. I understand this is the slow season but what should I expect for a timeline to get a renter in? The outside is nice with new siding on the garage and newer vinyl siding on the house and new roof and gutters, all added by the seller. We've done a lot of sprucing up on the inside new paint, carpet, vanity/sink, shower doors, new white switches and receptacles, blinds and a little bit of cabinet work. the house has a nice backyard and a one-car garage. In my opinion, after looking at some of the houses for rent in the area I think ours looks really solid. Our lease agent had originally said we could ask $1100 a month. I thought that was a bit high, but she assured me that she still thought $1100 was the right number. 3+ months later of paying the mortgage and utilities I'm starting to get a little itchy. We've now dropped the rent to $1,050. We got a fairly decent deal on the property and still have quite a bit of room to drop the price down if needed, but I feel like the leasing agent shot a little high and now we've been sitting on it for a while. Also, we had a ton of section 8 inquiries. is this normal for the area or is this a option we should be investigating for this particular house and area? Just looking for a little bit of feedback on our listing and any other marketing strategies that you guys think we could employ. Here's the listing: https://rnrealtors.appfolio.com/listings/detail/b06e5d4c-25f9-4c6d-9a2c-d1446fc30630 TIA!

[Matt K.]

Your link doesn't work, also you can try to see how yours stacks up on hot pads. Little more detailed then zillow maybe cross reference w/ craigslist (but be warned craigslist ads can just be left up and not updated).

[Steve Rozenberg]

I have Have always learned that its product versus price issues . If people are not calling on the property then it's a priced problem, if they're not coming coming to the property then it is a problem with the product. With so many avenues to market these days I would be curious where the agent is listing the property are they doing YouTube videos are the meta-tagging / geo-tagging / are they using keyword search optimization there's a lot of things that they could be doing and instead of just putting it on the MLS. Being proactive in getting as many people as possible is the key.

My opinion is get it rented get it leased and  get revenue coming into your property and worry about it next time.

if that house it's more than a month vacant you've probably lost a whole years of cash flow putting someone in the property is not just a financial but it's also a mental stress issue. Try to get the properties leased to be up closer to spring time so that you don't try to Lease it during the down months. That may mean make the lease 14 months not 12 as an example