Vacant unit, how many showings a week?

[Robert Hernandez]

Hello BP family,

I have a unit in one of my quadplex for rent. Property manager put the listing live on hotpad, zillow, trulia (etc) last week. She is going to put it on facebook and cragilist later this week.

This is my first rental and so far I have the following:

Showings: 2 

Calls: 8 

Emails: 36

No applications or comments.

From these numbers should I be concerned? Should I lower the price or deposit? How long is average vacancy? This is a lower income property (c class) area.

[Karen Jackson]

@Robert Hernandez Well with this time of year there’s many things to take into consideration. People are preparing their children for back to school if school hasn’t begun already. It’s also the end of the month so it may pick up around this weekend into next week. Don’t be so quick to drop your price to get it rented. If showings are not picking up by the week of Sept. 9th I would then consider a slight price drop so you can at least get it rented by the 15th. Unless you don’t mind having it vacant for a month. Sometimes you have to loose a little in the beginning to gain in the end. And make sure the numbers makes sense for you and dropping it doesn’t drastically cut into your cash flow etc.

In addition if there were 36 emails, have the PM follow up with those potential leads. Cause that’s a lot of inquiries you should at least have more apps and showings in unless they didn’t meet your criteria.