So I purchased my first SFH last year and quickly rented out 4 rooms before my 1st mortgage payment was due. I walled off the dining room creating an additional 5th bedroom turning the house to a 5bd/2.5ba and rented that one before my 2nd mortgage payment was due. I started with 2/3 month leases which were extended into the next year where now I've been dealing with turnover. Finding new tenants has not been easy but I also had some faults on my end which I learned of and fixed recently.

I'm hoping that this will improve application turnout. I've been told by a few in the Denver house hacking group that my house meets all the criteria for what rent-by-room people would be looking for. I also have strong screening, 3x income, 600+ credit, clean backgrounds, no evictions, felonies, or bankruptcies, 1-2 landlord references. It is 2720 sqft property, plenty of patio space, updated kitchen, lots of furnished common areas with kitchen supplies in a great location of Westminster only 15 min from downtown Denver. A few things I can think of that would deter applicants

- 4 bedrooms have to share one full bath upstairs and half bath on the main floor

- The yard is not perfect, especially the back. Grass is dead and hardly any plants in the garden beds. It's an ongoing project

- I don't have tv in any of the common areas, I was advised not to where it would minimize potential tenant altercations

- I have tenants on a rotating cleaning schedule where they only have to do their part every 4-5 weeks. I planned on hiring out cleaning services once I had moved out.

- No pets. Love them but don't want to deal with them which I know that shrinks my target market by 70% considering nearly everyone in Colorado has a pet

- I tell them in the showing that I am the landlord, live and work remotely in the basement. I don't share the rest of the house, I have my own kitchen/bathroom.

I've had to go $25-75 down under market rate and it still feels like a struggle to get applications. I even changed from TurboTenant to Innago to reduce the application fees from $55 down to $35. I lowered the overall security deposits but started to do one-time move-in fees where security deposit plus fee is $100 less than rent. I'm also part of many local Denver/Boulder/Colorado housing groups where my ads get posted as well.

What ways have you changed that significantly impacted application turn out for room-by-rent rentals? Is there other platforms to advertise on other than fb market place and roomies.com? I don't start ads until the tenant lets me know which is usually 30 days before the lease is up, should I be advertising 60 days prior to the lease ending? How many showings do you give a week before you get a lease signed for rent-by-room properties? It seems that I'm limited to only fb market place and roomies.com that allow ads for private rooms, are there others or other ways to get around zillow, trulia, padmapper that only accept rentals as a whole property? Is there a method to posting on market place, I've seen fb penalize my ads when I renew them and the boosting does not go as far as it did the first week, so I delete, repost and boost weekly.

Maybe I am worrying about trivial things but I don't like advertising for 3-4 weeks then the last week of the month I get bombarded by less quality interest only to get one applicant that I'm desperate to lease to so I don't have a vacancy. If there is something I missed, please ask any additional questions. Thank you

Denver, Colorado

1 Vote