Everytime I try new tactics to get a higher rent, it seems to fail.

Bottom line: PRICE!

Everytime.

I think I need to put the creative marketing in the BUNK folder with the pre-advertising.

I'm interested to know what you tried. If nothing else perhaps that specific tactic for higher rent failed. You never lack for creativity, for sure.

I have taken an average of competitors rents since I first started renting units. I know THE AVERAGE rents for properties in my area. For apartments with and without utilities, for efficiencies, 1,2, 3 bedrooms. Also, houses with 1,2,3,4 bedrooms.

I try to get above average rent when I first kid t them for rent. Why not?

What I find really odd is the amount of interest at the higher rent when a unit is advertised as "available soon".

As soon as it's ready, the interested people seem to vanish. Then I end up playing the price reduction game.

Most of my apartments are really nice and totally redone.

The thing is, I'm not getting above average rents.

For example: the average 2 bedroom without utilities is $655 a month. So, obviously, there have been apartments advertised for more and for less.

Honestly, I don't know how else a landlord could effectively set the price of their rents unless they pay attention to the competition. Without an idea of the competition, it's nothing more than a guess. I'm open for ideas on that for sure.

I ALMOST want to underprice the market by 5-10%.

I should be able to hit the market at the correct rent where people are fighting over a unit. Not tire-kicking, not looking at anybody else's places.

I'm just not sure how to use the information I've been collecting for years to trim down the vacancy. Honestly, I should be able to fill a unit within a week of it being ready. That's a workable goal.

If not, then why not?

The 24 hour turnover is not a possibility here.

I'm not clear about what you are asking. Are you not attracting tenants because you think the rent you are advertising is too high? If this is the case, check Craig's List and see what the going rates are in your area for the same amenities. Does your place compare? Is it clean and updated? Curb appeal?

"Honestly, I don't know how else a landlord could effectively set the price of their rents unless they pay attention to the competition. "

Price on the high side then be willing to negotiate a discount on the rent depending on how much interest you get.

Or price on the low side then bump up the rent at renewal.

Apartment, as in not a single family home.

Never have other than inherited tenants with dogs. , Dont want to get into the finger pointing of who's dog's doo it is in the yard and don't want unoccupied dogs barking all the time disturbing the neighbors.

Most of my units are extremely quiet any time you show up to them.

NE, ignore the troll. You know what happens when you wrestle with a pig.

So, back to the topic. I think you're wise to adjust to your specific market. If you're renting to the working poor ($15/hr and under), you're right: you're not going to get more money out of them, no matter what. I've tried multiple ideas from the forum. Some have worked, some have not. Nobody has been interested in renting appliances from me. Nobody wants lawn service. They don't care whether there's a dishwasher or what color the tub is. They DO care about how many bedrooms and how much per month and which utilities are included.

I used to be secretary to an assistant city manager of a major city. He retired to join the private sector. Several of us went out with him to a fancy restaurant that I'd never been to before. I still remember the waiter reciting the specials of the day. One of them had to do with "a tomato that was brought across the Atlantic on the Mayflower by the Pilgrims." My ACM's wife thought that sounded good, so she ordered it. When it arrived, she had... an artfully sliced tomato on her plate. With a little garnish. She looked at it like, "Ummmmm..."

Whenever people talk about creative marketing, I always remember that tomato. You can make it sound as fancy as you want, but at the end of the day, you're ordering a $30 tomato dinner. Some people can afford to order a $30 tomato dinner. Other people want at least a steak dinner for their $30. Me, I'd spend $15 on steak, $15 on lobsters, and have a nice $30 dinner-for-two by cooking at home. And my tenants would probably go out and buy a week's worth of groceries for $30.

NE saddened by the personal attack. At any rate I believe your stories and don't mind your stream of thought posts.

I think in your clientele, you need to up-sell rather than start high and work down. Personally, I think the starting high in real estate, unless you are marketing to a group with lots of discretionary income, is a waste. In the end it hurts you as you have found out. My tenants have a bit more disposable income than yours so the up-sell works good for me. I add pet rent and pet fees as well as rent washers and dryers. I have storage too. I collect a water fee in multi-unit properties where I pay the water even if it's $5 per month. I once found a book on the psychology of pricing. I read it and one takeaway was that my rent of $495 was no different in the "buyer's" mind than $499. The end result was I added change my offer price and the only thing that changed was my income. The bottom line is that all humans have behavior that is not rational you have to find and tap into that for your target tenant.

Now your pet policy. If you are willing to work a bit harder, you can add dogs to your apartments. The thing you have to do is screen the dogs and the owners. Just because they have the money doesn't make them a good dog owner. It takes time to screen pets. If you don't have time for that then the extra money is not worth it.

As far as pets in non-SFH, it DOES work if you screen the pets, as posted above. And it opens up a whole new pool of renters to you. Possibly renters that WILL pay a little more.

99% of our places have pets, even the apartments.

We have a quadplex that has two GIANT dogs in one unit, none in the second, two SMALL dogs in the next and I think 4 cats at the other end. I've never had one complaint about the pets from anyone.

Downstairs we have a tenant with a black lab. You would never know unless someone enters the yard. In other words, appropriate barking.

A LL friend offers his SFH's with ALL the bells and

whistles. ( Amenities )

I offer Basic,Code Compliant SFH's,

without Anything Fancy. (lower than market)

While he enjoys collecting Higher Rents,(at or above market)

His personal stress level is much Higher, (than mine)

because of Turnovers,Damages, Repairs, Visits,

Accounting and Administrative time / costs.

His Tenants seem to think they are renting

Maintenance Free, Country Clubs.

He and I compare Notes and walk away with a

to each his own conclusion and neither would be willing

to trade.

Note : Our Rental Homes are located in the same Cities and Neighborhoods.

Which is one more reason I prefer medium-to-big dogs over the small ones. Small dogs bark non-stop sometimes. We have a tenant right now in one of the studios with two small dogs. Sometimes one of them will just stand on the deck and bark for no reason at all. Just bark bark bark.

Hi NE. We borrowed an idea from Deals on Wheels author Lonnie Scruggs. Lonnie was selling used mobile homes and his theory was the buyers didn’t care about the final price of the home, but rather if could they afford the monthly payment. Fixer Jay Decima also speaks of good terms being more important to him than price.

I don’t know if you do this or not; We offer our Residents weekly, twice a month and monthly rental options. Our homes are not at all the least expensive, but we offer our Residents terms they like.

Our current vacancy is a single-wide mobile home that we have advertised as $240/week, $507.50 twice a month or $995/month. $240/week ( $12,480/year); $507.50 twice a month ($12,180/year) or $995/month ($11,940/year).

In looking at our past numbers, 2 Residents chose weekly, 3 chose twice a month, 5 chose every month and 1 chose to pay a year in advance. More than ½ of our Residents wanted something other than the traditional monthly due date.

We had a very bad experience early on with damages left by a Resident so we would never offer a lowered security deposit option. In fact, we get above market security deposits for our properties ($1,600 no pets or $1,800 pets when $800-900 would be market) because we allow our Residents to pay out their deposit over three months.

There is not a huge risk to us with the security deposit payments as we have already been inside their previous home for our pre- approval in-home visit and we visit our homes every 3-4 months. We borrowed an idea from Jeffrey and we return $50.00 of their security deposit to the Resident on each of these scheduled security deposit return visits.

Because of the options we offer Residents, we are able to get above average rents with above average security deposits and a little extra over the course of the year for weekly or twice monthly options.

All the best!

Renne

If ''tis is NOT a smoke free property, make the price bigger and advertise as "Smokers Welcome!"

for about 10 years, at every turn over I spent money making my lower end places the nicest of that level units in my area. I charged at the higher end of pricing but not the top and not over the top for the neighborhoods. My thoughts were that I'd get "the best" of the tenant pool for that area/price. At turn overs, I'd find that I again needed to spend money refurbishing.

bottom line as others above have said ... they are going to pay only what they have in mind when they start looking. if they want to pay $600, they are not going to pay you $640 just because your place is cleaner, has a bigger yard, new tub surround, etc.

NE, I would dare say YOU are focusing on the wrong thing. Your focus should not be Price, price, price....

If your priority is higher rents, your focus should be figuring out how to reach out (and cater) to the right Target market, tarket maket, target market...

I remember hearing Jeffrey talk about target markets several years ago and a light bulb went off for me.

Basically, in thinking over your many residents, does any group stand out as being overall better tenants? Or worse?

I realized that our best and longest term tenants were made up of a couple of specific groups...And it was NOT families that wanted 3-4-5 bedroom homes. THAT group ended up being uniformly horrible for us as tenants. So we got rid of the homes that attracted that group.

WMH, I was just coming back to touch in that type of thing. My "target market" isn't an occupation. It's a personality. My target market is responsible people who appreciate the quality of unit I'm trying to provide.

Maybe my issue is provided what's not typical in my area, so that limits my target market?

With the above and below average pricing of my competition, the nice stuff is super expensive and the cheap stuff is garbage. That is my opinion speaking.

I don't know how to target a personality. I can easily target say: nurses or teachers. But there are all types of personalities within all occupations.

"I really should look at my history of tenants and see who were the best and where they came from."

NE, Now you're thinking! You are beginning to answer your own question.

Exactly Deanna!

NE, yes, maybe it's that time in your career that instead of comparing yourself to the competition, maybe take a moment to compare your own units to each other, and compare the types of tenants they have attracted. Examine your own experiences.

One of our targets! Pick the right one and they take care of their places (many are cleaner than the women!) pay their rent, no sob stories, etc.

So how do you make your places more attractive to single guys?

Some of my best tenants are single men. They don't call for every little thing like can you come fix a loose door knob and they don't care if the refrigerator develops a small amount of rust on it.

NE, let me add and emphasize something going back to your original question. Your original aim of this discussion was that you wanted to get higher rent. So when I suggest going after target markets, I'm also saying going after target markets who are able or willing to pay the price point you want.

It's not enough to simply discover who have been your best residents in the past. Because if you determine that one of those best type residents in the past are not willing or able to pay higher rent, then to accomplish your goal of getting higher rent, you will need to consider going after and cater to OTHER target markets.

Based on what Jeffrey said above: we KNOW we are some of the only LLs on the beach offering Pet-Friendly housing. That's our main niche. MANY of our residents are with us ONLY because of that. There are certainly nicer houses out there! Ours are fine, we do our best, but there are much nicer spaces out there...but no pets allowed.

Also smoking. Many residents smoke. Fewer and fewer these days, but they are still out there. We allow smoking. Again a niche market because most of the nicer houses out there say, "No Pets. No Smoking!" Our houses are cute, and allow both.

Warning! In depth training on Target Markets is usually reserved for landlord boot camps, where it can be taught and discussed in great detail with numerous interactive examples given and how to best market. Such marketing can be extremely effective and produce higher rents.

Besides ones normal offerings to the general market, there is also a market for those who might normally qualify but find it hard to find rentals that meet their mental and or physical challenges.

Visit your local agency in charge of finding such properties for these people, they have been willing to pay for the modifications to your property to meet their needs in return for an extended lease contract. For some unknown reason if you maintain your property and visit them from time to time, they don't want to move. LOL LOL

I think it's a nice way to market to a niche market without Fair Housing issues. It's just a thought.

Hi NE,

I have had some good success with tenant retention and long term tenants. I've had several tenants stay for more than 30 years.

I was at one of the 30 yearer's place and he was playing Powerball. I asked what he would do if he won, it was one of those $400 million jackpots. He said "I'm going to buy this place." And I said, "If you win I'll sell it to you."

Another 30 yearer told me the only way she's leaving is horizontal.

One of the things that I look for on the rental application is how LONG they have stayed at their current rental and previous rentals. I always ask why are you moving? A recent rental applicant told me that the house they had rented for 10 years was being sold and they had to move, didn't really want to, and they wanted to keep their kids in the same school. I verified that the house actually was being sold, and paid a visit to their current rental. several thing that I learned were that they were decent housekeepers, and that they didn't like to move and stayed places for a long time.

I like to rent houses in good school districts where people what to send their kids to school. At one house the people wanted their 2 kids to go to this school, they stayed for 13 years until the youngest one graduated high school, then moved so the Dad wouldn't have a 70 mile one way commute to his job.

NE,

I agree with focusing on value rather than price.

I also know that newer appliances get our slows rented the next day.

The last 20? leases I signed have all commented how they chose our rental because the others had carpet.

But I'll offer a different approach:

You ARE listening to your applicants but not HEARING what they are saying.

When they say PRICE they are really saying "I don't have the money". This could be long term or short term money.

TERMS are just as or more important than price. 70% of our new leases COME to us for the PayDayPlan Rent. We advertise it heavily.

Win-win. They get in with less move in cost and we get it rented quickly. We get the rent with less hassle and we make more money.

Also revisit your system for bottlenecks. Our prospects can see it on our website, apply for free online, tour with a lockbox, and sign a lease with little or no contact.

We monitor our marketing expenses with the first question on the app "How did you here about us?". Eye opening how the newspaper only gets 2 out 10 apps. We only approve 1.5 out of 10. So where did the 1 that actually signs come from?

I have shifted and now track NEW LEASES. 90% of our leases (successful applicants) now come from Zillow/Trulia, 5% from signs, 3% from personal referrals, and 1% from newspaper. (the last 1% is a mixture of odd sources)