For Rent Open House?

[Kyle Meyers]

I am getting close to having my new rental ready to lease and I am considering having an open house. I have some questions I have been wondering about and would love the input of more experienced landlords on.

The property is a duplex in Indianapolis, it should be ready to offer for rent in about a week. I was wondering when I should start marketing for the open house. I am planning to post ads online on several free listing sites. I would like to start advertising right away so I can get as many people to come to the open house as possible, but I don't want to have something delay the property from being ready and have advertised an open house date that I can't have. To solve this I thought of the following options:

1. Push the open house back one week so I have more time for unforeseen delays.

2. Don't advertise the property as an open house, just have a number to call, then when people call, do some pre-screening and tell them about the open house, this way I will have contact information for everyone so if I have to change the date I can call them.

3. Just advertise the open house for the planned date and if everything isn't ready I will just have the open house anyways. I don't think there is much that would have to be pushed back at this point, all the work is scheduled to be done early next week so there would be a few days buffer.

I also don't know how much lead time I should have for these ads, is a week and a half enough? too much?

My other concern is what to do once I have potential tenants viewing the property. I want to get a lot of applications in. I would like to collect applications with the $10 application fee and make copies of their recent paystubs and drivers license. In your experience, will people be willing to do this? Also, should I print the income requirements on the informational flyer I am going to hand out?

I really want to make this open house go well so I can find a tenant quickly, any help is greatly appreciated.