My market has cooled a bit around here. I have become a little pickier in who I rent to over the past few years. These two combined has added to longer vacancies. I'm running a 2 month average now to get a unit rented. This one is going on 4 months today.

I also play all the cards I can think of to get units rented. Winter special, $99 move in special, move in gifts, referral rewards to existing tenants. Some units I just can't get rented. They sit and sit and sit.

Cleaned between units by professional ladies.

My current vacancy was rented for $685 for a year. Before that, it was $650 a year. Before that it was $685 for 2 years.

I am now down to $575 on this unit with no takers.

Ultimately, I see it as losing $685 for 4 months. I probably should've just listed it at $550 in October and raised it again in the spring. Hindsight being what it is, it's what I should've done.

Sometimes the things just sit!!

If something is priced considerably below what it is worth, customers begin to ask themselves "what is wrong with the place to be priced so low?" and simply look elsewhere.

If you are shopping in the $550 a month price range and everything is one bedroom studios then suddenly you see a 3/2 SFH that looks completely out of place among other comparable listings, the immediate reaction is that something is out of place.

Vacancies are costly, but dropping your price too much wont necessarily attract the kind of tenant you want anyway.

Jimmy, I know that tends to be the mantra here, but for my area I don't find it to be true. My stubbornness of wanting to hold out for top dollar (or even the same dollar) ends up costing me more money most of the time and they rent when I drop them. I am seeing higher priced units listed by competition and I'm also seeing them sit.

I've never had ANY luck raising the price, so I don't do that anymore.

I think it's ok to list a little higher at turnover, but I want filled in 2 weeks max. I'm not chasing the 24 hour turnover, but I don't like going longer than a month either.

Vacancies can make a LL feel very insecure.

Make sure that a well paid tech savvy 20 something would find your ads, videos, & application process catered to their smartphones.

I see properties sit and sit here too. Sometimes my own but they don't sit EMPTY as I am advertising and showing them two months before that. I think waiting until it's empty start marketing is guaranteeing empty months...

It's take me all of 60 days to find a suitable replacement these days...If I was waiting until they were empty I'd be hanging myself.

You are out in the country or deep suburbs aren't you?

If not you are describing the areas outside of the big metropolises. Only the big cities are doing well and cresting the great values of years gone by...everyone else is abandoning the low job areas and heading to cell phone savvy walk-able dwellings.

Just my experience, I didn't know it was the common wisdom.

NE,

My theory: populations rise and fall within the city so sometimes there are no customers for our products.

Right now in my town there are Help Wanted signs everywhere. The employers cannot find workers and apps for my lower priced homes have slowed - this is the same pool of people. Entry level factory = Brad's residents.

I work on the LAYERS principle. People in a certain price range stay in that price range or that LAYER. $600 people are not looking for $1000 homes and vice versa. Our $1000's can go fast while the $600's sit.

In my town the new, hip 2 bd apts are rentign for $1200 while my 4 bd 2 bath home with a yard sits vacant for $1000. A recent influx of young engineers want to live close to the bar scene and not mow a yard.

My suggestion is to seriously study the local market of those harder to rent places. Study the layers and where you fit.

And...Not every community is good for renting. Don't be afraid of selling off the hard to rent homes.

Every good business "culls the herd" every year.

BRAD

I was and am busy so I didn't complete my post.

I left out the positive portion that I like to add.

You don't have too many to fill, even if you have a hundred, I'm being "wine barrel is half full" here.

So rather than working on a great net that will catch all fish, (which is what you should always be doing anyway), try and go after that one fish you really want.

I would go to your your current teni and ask them one by one to keep their eyes open for that one family or renter that you need.

I would even go to the ugly tenant and make peace and offer some kind of compensation for helping.

I would go to the great teni and tell them your are happy that they rent from you and if they know of anyone to please send them your way...."word of mouth" (in other words, word of mouth gets the good deals that you don't find advertised).

I would go to the neighbors whom you like the most and say, "please keep your ears open for good teni, I want to place people that will fit well with the neighborhood".

("you know, they keep the same kind of boat without current registration in the driveway, they have great barbecue grills under the gutters which are full of leaves, they collect broken riding lawn mowers in a vain hope that one day they will make one out of three". Okay, maybe don't add your true feelings, keep it simple)

I read recently, that in Wisconsin, more than half of the counties have decreased in population since 2010. Wisconsin, as a whole, has increased their population. However, the increase went to the urban areas. The rural areas lost people. This is part of a nationwide trend.

Time to change the towns a bit.

Cater to the people who are retiring. Florida, boats, lavish red sports cars, this is all TV.

In the real world, there are countless people who simply need a relaxing retirement in a small home out of the rat race.

The home needs to be close to health care.

Highlight the areas of your town which may appeal to people who are retiring on a very limited income.

NE I have posted about this before. What you are experiencing is the result of over pricing. When you start high and work down you end up at a lower price and with months of no rent.

Watch the market. When a place sits and doesn't rent, it's over priced. Plain and simple, people move every month it's our job to attract and capture those pulling the trigger before our competition does.

NE,

I'm in Western PA and the market has been very cyclical even among the different municipalities we operate in. I know parts of my rental market got hammered by the lack of natural gas production. I had some units that were rented to folks involved with site excavation, some involved in pipe lines, some involved with drilling, some involved in surveying, and today no Tenants involved in the energy market. And I'm sure the downstream jobs that were tied to this industry have also dried up.

All I can say is keep your standards up, screen, screen, and screen some more. In my opinion, it's still better to sit with an empty unit than renting to the wrong Tenant.

Hi NE,.

How/where do you advertise?

What is your target market?

Our market has changed too. We have had to really step up on the advertising to get the type of people that we want to rent to.

We do Zillow( postlets, Trulia and Craigslist) and with pictures galore. They don't click much if no pic. We send a reply within the day with our pre qualification questions.

So we post old fashioned flyers in the laundromats, bakeries, and supermarkets with advertising in Spanish and English.

When you get a call, you can also ask what they are paying now for their rent, just to check comps in your area. The new/rehabbed cheapie apt buildings in our area are what we are competing with.

We also have landlord friends that I send all my potentials that won't work in our place(ie, they want 3 br, but I only have 2br.). They return the favor.

I agree. Raising the price in our area doesn't work either. Rental pricing has been stagnant, with little growth. Bring them in a little cheaper, and raise rents 2-3% is better than having higher rents at the start.

Good luck to you.

I've got one that I've been sitting on all December. But it's not because of interest. I've just turned down my third applicant (a young man who spend half his monthly income on payments for two cars).

This year has been a rough one for us for evictions. Normally we'd average one per year. So far in 2016 we've had four and three more who simply left before we reached that level.

That's a terrible average for us and I blame myself since I'm the one who screens these folks. Looking back they weren't accepted because they had prior evictions (that's an automatic screen out). But in reviewing their credit reports I noticed a trend of looking at some with more accounts in collections than I should have accepted. And I'm not talking about things like medical bills or student loans.

So we're changed out ads to include NO history of collections. That hasn't stopped at least two of the applicants I've rejected from applying and wasting our time. I explain during the phone interview the need to NOT have accounts in collections and frankly, it's depressing to hear the number of folks who admit they have this (quite honestly, I'd die of shame if any of my bills reached this stage). They then go on to attempt to justify why this is on their credit history but by then, I've tuned them out.

I guess my rental might be on the market for a long time if I'm dealing with folks who don't appear to have a second thought about this collection business.

When I hear of landlords say they have vacancies for a long time, my belief is the problem is infront of the mirror.

-priced wrong... not doing market research

-not making easy for people to rent (no website or unlocked doors)

-simply being too hard to get ahold of

-coming off to potential renters as "rude" or "mean". Need to be a sales person too..

?Really Tim?

So...when I turn down the couple with 16 accounts in collections I'm "rude" or "mean"?

Perhaps I should just leave the rental house door "unlocked" and let anyone passing by walk through it with the hope that my washer and dryer doesn't walk out with them.

Is the issue of long vacancies that folks are not responding to ads (this isn't the case with us) or that many of those who respond I wouldn't hire to walk my dog, let alone turn over an investment worth many thousands of dollars.

Gail

I see the same way Tim does. Every problem I face, I first consider if I have caused the problem, if not, have I exacerbated this problem? How can I avoid the problem in the future? If I can't avoid the problem; how can I minimize the negative effects going forward?

Well, I absolutely could blame myself for this. I really didn't take into consideration the market cooling. I've been getting the same rent pretty much for the last four years, by local people who weren't here as part of the natural gas boom. This property is on the fringe of the natural gas boom and doesn't get a lot of draw for people in that industry. But across the board I have to say that this has probably affected this vacancy. Combined with an election and combined with the holidays and combined with going into winter. Those are a lot of factors stacked against a little apartment in a small country town.

Sisco gets it! Congrats!!! So yes, Gail... really. The truth doesn't always taste good. Sometimes it just plain hurts...

Tim; maybe I can send a few of these applicants your way.

NE-your a little far away

Tim, maybe her market just isn't very good.

But I agree in that it's tougher to find quality renters in the lower priced units. If I had that problem (which I don't, my market is awesome) I'd get rid of the non-performers.

All Real Estate Is Local.

So to pass judgment on landlords that you don't really know beyond posts on a board and about areas you don't live or know about - hmm.

At one time, for instance, Detroit was a vibrant and viable city. Things changed.

Charleston, West Virginia: a nice little city. Things changed.

We thank our lucky stars every day we bought in an area people want to live. But guess what? If the seas really do rise, we are toast. Things change.

Nothing wrong with a little reflection. After reading the back story it's daunting. This can happen to anybody. There are no guarantees. We just ride the waves we are given.

NE, I found the same thing this summer. Top two properties that rented quickly in the last five years just sat for two months. Only people applying had issues I chose not to overlook. I filled one after 2 months and sold the other on the retail market. I closed early Nov. and the person that bought it wants to use it as an investment property - it is still empty.

I would scratch it up to an election year and the associated uncertainty. That still exist today so you will need to address it.

To market the place - have your tenants name their own price - with no reasonable offer being refused.