Your Guide to Self Showings

One of the most difficult aspects of real estate investing is filling a vacancy. You are going to be spending hundreds or thousands of dollars to clean and rehab the unit, in addition to missing out on missed rent. For me, the most time-consuming part of filling a vacancy is showing the unit to prospective applicants. In the past, I would need to figure out a time that would work for both of us, drive there, and hope they wouldn’t stand me up. I tried doing an open house but you inevitably have people who can’t make it during that time.

In my experience, people enjoy the flexibility of seeing the unit when it is convent for them and without someone else hovering over them. Setting up self-showings gives applicants the freedom and flexibility to see the unit without any pressure. There are a few ways to set up self-showings so find one that works well for you. The first thing you might be thinking is what if they steal something or damage the property? There shouldn’t be anything in the unit they can steal, and I guess it is possible they could maliciously damage something but the chances of that are very low. I do not advertise it as a self-showing in the listing, so people won’t target the property.

• Contractors Box: This is the standard lockbox that fixates to the doorknob or something close by. Create a unique combination and send that over to the applicants. This is a low-cost method at about $25 and does the job well. I would recommend changing the code every few days and double-checking the keys are still in there.
• Codebox: These boxes will generate a single-use, timeframe code that you can give to the prospective applicant. These boxes are durable, weatherproof, and have a 9-volt battery backup. There is a one-time cost of $75 per box.
• Nu-Set: These boxes also generate a single-use code and have a battery backup. This box comes with a retractable key leash which prevents people from locking the keys inside or forgetting to put them back in the box. These boxes start at $105.

Make sure you are very descriptive in your listing and try to answer as many questions as you can ahead of time. People generally do not like to reach out if they have questions so answering them ahead of time is always a good idea. Try to give them an idea of what the utility costs are, hidden gems about the neighborhood, all the recent upgrades to the unit, applicant criteria, and why you are such an amazing property manager! You can also create a landing page with all the information and links to the online application. I do like to have paper copies of the applications there as well since not everyone is savvy with online forms. They can take a photo of each application page and email it to me.

While this system is not perfect, it greatly reduces the time it takes to show a property. Yes, issues could still arise, like people locking the key inside, or forgetting to put the key back but I have never had an issue with this. I always like to meet my tenants during the process so I prefer to hand the keys to them when they move in, however you could have them take the keys from the lockbox and do the entire move-in process remotely!