Have I exhausted finding a tenants?

Question

Hi All,

I'm brand new to BiggerPockets so please, go easy. We're on our third buy and hold in San Antonio. Our first house was rented by out of state renters. After four months, they broke the contact to purchase their own house. It has now been empty for 9-10 weeks. It's remodeled and clean.  Here's what we've put into action: recently hired a realtor, lowered our price, checked comps to ensure price is right, put sign outside, listed on rental, zillow, MLS, etc, shown the house to people.

Trying to figure out how I can be more creative with this but wondering if we keep lowering the price or just sell. Loosing steam.

Corby Goade · Answer

That sounds like a long time...What is the vacancy rate in your area? If you don't know, hopefully your realtor can share some stats with you. I'd call your local chapter of NARPM, they usually track vacancy stats for metro areas and you'll have a good idea of your experience is normal or not.

Good luck!

Rob B. · Answer

Thank you @Natalie H.! And James does have a good point about using Facebook Marketplace (again, don't want to knock it; my sister secured her last apartment via a quick search on the FB marketplace). That said do you happen to have a link to the listing that you'd be willing to share? I'd also say that by refreshing the listing or unpublishing and then publishing again can help to push that rental up on the listing site feeds (all depends upon the platform you're using).

James Galla · Answer

@Natalie H.

Make sure to list the property on the local Facebook marketplace as well. If you're not getting legitimate bites, you should consider lowering the rent again. This assumes the property is clean, has good photos, and is on par with other market standards.

10 weeks or so of vacancy shows the listing is stale and folks just aren't interested in what you're offering at that price point. Keeping it vacant results in more of a loss of money than lowering the rent does - think about it: you've got costs like taxes and perhaps financing as well as silent costs such as capital expenditures. All those costs continue to accrue while there is no gross rental income to offset them.

Good luck.

Rob B. · Answer

Hi Natalie, I will say it is great that you're going through the process of rethinking where you want to set that price; and I don't want to knock Craigslist or Facebook for posting your listing because a lot of landlords have luck finding tenants there. I will say, it could be worth considering a shot at an actual software solution built for DIY landlords (1 - 15 units) that helps you to automate your own rental process and can help to get a renter in there fast (ie. compared to other tools, one that helps you to actually build a single listing and syndicates it to 10+ major listing sites, allows you to schedule showings, provides you with super thorough tenant screening options, online digital leases which can be customized and help you by breaking out those fees, automated maintenance tracking, and fast rent collection which also offers your tenants the ability to report their positive on-time payments to the major credit bureaus; just another positive reinforcement/added incentive to get them to make those payments on time). I'm hoping it will rent soon and I think you have the right idea thus far; it is still early enough in the fall so don't lose hope/steam just yet! @Natalie H.

Rick Pozos · Answer

@Natalie H. what part of town is the property and how much are you asking for rent? Beds, baths, etc. Personally I dont believe that Zillow, MLS or rentometer are great for rentals. Lots of rentals are by owner so they never get into zillow or mls or rentometer database. They tend to get the higher rents for the nicer properties. The rest of the neighborhood that might be just as nice, but people are charging a bunch less. If there is a bunch of people charging less, THAT is what the market price is, not what shows up on the websites.

This is why when someone tells me that I should be able to get $1600 for a rental because it says that on rentometer, I just laugh and say, PASS.

Natalie H. · Answer

Thank you so much for all the great info!

Natalie H. · Answer

Thanks All! I’ve taken bits and pieces of this and come up with a new plan.

Thomas Garza · Answer

Hey @Natalie H., sorry to hear you are having a bad experience with one of your rental properties.

We just had a property that took almost 8 weeks to rent, and it was stressful. I realized towards the end that it was much cheaper for me to drop my price, than it was to miss another month's rent. By dropping the price by $50 per month (from $1250 to $1200), I reduced my yearly income by $600, but I was able to generate more interest and rent the property much quicker. Of course, I don't know how much longer the house would have sat vacant if I didn't lower the rent, but every 15 days the property sat vacant was costing me $600 (in lost revenue), so 2 additional weeks would have been my break even point.

You might also consider signing a 7 or 8 month lease with your next tenant so that you can time your vacancies around the beginning of summer instead of fall or winter.

Keep your spirits up and best of luck with your property.

Natalie H. · Answer

Thx @RickPozos! It’s in NE SA.

Have I exhausted finding a tenants?

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