Reside in Back and Rent-Out Front - Strategy to Attract Renters?

[Dalia D.]

Elated to be a part of the BP community...! 

Purchased a 3 bedroom 2 bath (showers only) beach property home in Birch Bay WA (unincorporated town near Blaine). It is a destination for Canadians, Alaskans, Washingtonians as well as other Pacific Northwesters. The house has an attached mother-in-law in the back  end.  The prior owner (of 12 years) lived in Seattle and managed the front as a vacation rental and at times rented the back 1 bedroom unit as a month-to-month rental.

Currently, I am attempting to rent out the front using Craigslist. The rent is competitive with the local (neighborhood) rentals and the location is convenient to Bellingham where the jobs are...  I have not been getting any responses through Craigslist, especially because the contact phone number is "encryted" (wrriten-out) to eliminate SPAM and SCAMS.

So,  my questions are:

Should I be using a different rental approach? Vacation Rental?

Is there any other platform where can go to to solicit renters?

I have spent the time researching through Biggerpockets how to market rentals and screen for tenants. The house and forms are all ready to go...  Thank you, dalia

[Nathan Gesner]

For short-term rentals, consider marketing on VRBO or AirBnB. For long-term, market on Postlets. Postlets allows you to create one ad and then it pushes / syndicates it to other sites like Zillow, Trulia, and Hotpads. Don't overlook the power of a yard sign!