All Forum Posts by: Wes Hunt

Mailchimp and some of their competitors have very easy customizable forms that create markup you can copy into your site. They also integrate well with popular content management systems like WordPress through plugins.

These forms then feed into a mail list that works well for lead gathering. I believe Mailchimp is free for up to a certain amount of use.

That does seem a little high, but it depends on what you get for that price. Customer support with your website or if you have issues loading listings can be pretty valuable.

However, I agree with Elizabeth, Bluehost, Hostgator, or GoDaddy provide cheap hosting and easy Wordpress setup (almost 1-click). Wordpress is much more than a blog system anymore and one of the easiest content management systems out there to use. My background is web development (13+ years), and I found WP the easiest and most user friendly for non-technical users to manage with many great books that can get you up to speed. You could totally use Wordpress post functionality as-is to post listings. There are plenty of theme sites that sell modern, mobile friendly Wordpress themes for a one time fee of less than $25-50.

For some up front cost you could pay a Wordpress developer to setup custom listing post types and any other customization you want. If you already have a WP theme the cost will be way less. It should be easy to find a local one no matter where you live.

Cheers!

I also like to inspect around twice a year. I coincide the inspections with seasonal maintenance, generally fall and spring. By combining inspections with property maintenance (gutters, AC/Heating, etc) it benefits the tenant as much as it does me. I've caught issues the tenant hadn't reported, but weren't their fault and had to be extremely annoying to them. Making sure I'm keeping a good tenant happy (and renewing) is just as important as preventing misuse of the property.