Rental listing blowing up, advice on raising rate / bidding war?

[Spencer Zeff]

Hi! 

One of my units is opening up in September.  We decided to raise the rent by 12.75% and put it on all the listing websites, but most importantly StreetEasy (the go-to website for rentals in NYC).  Since we put it on the market on July 26th, the listing has been saved by 141 users on StreetEasy and 34 groups (and counting) are signed up to come to our open houses this week.  On top of that, we have had at least 10 people say they want to apply before they even see the apartment.  Due to this extreme volume of interest, we are thinking it might make sense to raise the rate before our first open house to weed out some of the interested parties.  Our other option would be to ask prospective tenants to "submit their best offer".  Does anyone have any advice/best practices?