How to get prospective tenants to commit to viewing the property?

[Dominique Palmer]

Wondering how other land lords approach this. My partners and I have been stood up a few times when appointments were scheduled to view a unit. We could do an open house type viewing maybe one or two days out of the week and after viewing the tenants that are serious can pay an application fee and then move forward with renting the unit.

Does anybody do it another way? Like maybe having prospects fill out an app and paying the fee even before they let the prospect physically view the unit.

[Michael Noto]

@Dominique Palmer This is a very frustrating part of renting out apartments that nearly every landlord has been through. We fill about 7-10 units per month here in Connecticut and this is what we found works best to avoid this:

1. In your initial contact with the perspective renter make sure you clearly outline your minimum requirements for renting. 

2. Then from there if they want to proceed with viewing ask them when works for them to view and once you agree on a time/date tell them very clearly that you will be texting them the day of to confirm. 

3. The day of the appointment text them 2-3 hours in advance to confirm and in the text direct them to respond to you if they will be coming or not. 

By doing things this way we very rarely get stood up because if people aren’t going to come they either don’t respond to the text or they text you they can’t come. 

 As far as scheduling goes lets say you schedule an appointment for 5p on a Monday. As you get more people inquiring try and schedule appointments around that already scheduled appointment. That works well for us too.