No landlord really wants to have rental voids, but there are ways in which you can make the most of them. In the first part, we looked at the all important issues of doing inside and outside maintenance to your property, and now we’re turning our thoughts towards promoting your property.
Once all your maintenance tasks are complete, and your property is looking at its best, it’s on to the all important task of promoting your property. If you’re using a letting agent, then hopefully they will already have started to include your rental property in their marketing to potential new tenants, but if you’re keen to fill your rental void as soon as possible, you can get involved too.
Word of Mouth
Don’t underestimate the value of word of mouth, as telling people you have a property available can sometimes get passed on to people who need somewhere to let. This is something you can develop over time, especially if you have a large portfolio of properties, as many people find it helps to get a reputation as being a landlord, so people come to you when they’re looking for somewhere to rent.
Advertising
If you know of any local publications that your letting agent doesn’t target, then you could do you own advertising. It would be a good idea to run this by your letting agent first, so that you don’t step on their toes, and it’s good to provide their contact details, or a link to their website with your property listing on.
You could use your advertising to try and tap into markets that your letting agent may not be covering, like local parish magazines, hospital housing lists or even university housing lists. Where you advertise will depend in part on your property, its location and whether you’re keen to target long or short term tenants.
Online Promotion
If you’re a user of social networking sites, like Facebook, are active on forums, or use Twitter, then you can use all of these to help promote your property. Sending one single message out to all your Facebook friends, to let them know that your property is available for rental, is a quick and easy way of spreading the word.
If you’re using Twitter, then as well as targeting anyone who’s following you and reading your tweets, you could use hashtags to spread the word further. For example, you could add one to each property related tweet you send to let people know where the property is located or that you simply have a property for let. In these cases, the hashtags could be #nottingham #propertyforlet or #rental.
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