Handling Vacancy Emails & Web Contacts

In my last blog I talked about handling vacancy calls. If you care about the topic at all (handling leads on a vacant rental), you should read both these blogs as they really go together. Not to toot my own horn, but there’s good stuff in that post about the process, questions to ask, etc.

We used to put for rent signs in the yard and advertise the place in print. The signs are still a good idea, but print is all but dead for finding prospective tenants. It’s all online now – Craigslist, Zillow, Facebook, etc. With this ease of getting info out comes the ease of inquiring back – by email. This is great . . . and bad.

With calls you get a fast give and take. You also get to listen for what the person is really looking for and maybe even catch things they aren’t wanting to share. Email, by contrast, is a screen that’s hard to see behind. People rarely overshare on email like they will on the phone.

The simplicity of emailing or requesting info in a website means you’ll flat out get more inquiries. But don’t confuse this with meaning you’re getting more real leads. The ease of these contacts mean a lot more tire kickers. The average caller is more legitimately interested than the average emailer, but that’s not the saying you won’t get serious inquiries electronically.

I generally answer email with email, even if the phone number is listed. Now I may break from this rule if it’s off-season (like now) and the traffic is lower, I may call back email leads. I believe you’ll convert more casual interest to legit prospects if you reply via phone instead of just email. But when you’re getting 20 emails a day, you don’t want to call all those folks back. Make up a nice standard reply to copy and paste.

Your “form” reply should include the basic terms and answers to commonly asked questions. Its startling how many people won’t read the original ad – they’re looking for an efficiency apartment on the Northside that will allow their seven pit bulls and we have a 2BR apartment south of the city with no pets allowed. In our case we also point them to our website for a walk-through video, photos, pet policy, etc. (we give them a reason to go there).

After the basics we like to say “Please feel free to ask any specific questions you may have. We try to do the first round of inquiries by email to help us keep track of things. After gathering some basic info, we're happy to schedule a viewing.”

We like to ask questions too. “We have a few questions too - it would help us if you could answer these for us.” Here are our favorites:

• How soon are you looking to move?
• Is there any special feature you must have (garage, level yard, in unit laundry, etc.)?
• Do you have any pets? Number and breed?
• How is your credit (good / bad / ugly)?
• What’s the best number to reach you at?

Don’t forget this “Thanks for answering our questions!” It’s nice to sound friendly and not like you’re interrogating them!

So if they reply to your email, even if they skip the questions, they’re probably reasonably serious. You can run the whole thing with emails back and forth, but at this point it’s probably easiest and best to just follow it up with a phone call.