Another thing we do a lot is the compositions. If you are new, you can use comps. You can go to craiglist.com. Put on the street or the place or anything of that nature.

We use a site called RentOMetercom. Alright. It’s not great, but it’s one of the other pieces if you want to find out how much your comps are worth.

Use the MLS System if you have access to it. We are real estate agents, so we have access to the MLS System. If not, maybe you have a realtor who is a friend or someone you can get gifts for RentalHomes.com. It’s one of the big rental sites and you can go there to try to get freebies to try to find out the value of your property. Once again, just call around.

drive around the neighborhood

One of the best ways to find out is to drive around the neighborhood and look for a for rent sign. Have your cell phone in hand. When you see a sign for rent three doors down, give it a call. Pretend you are interested and find out why they are renting. That way, you could really have a tight range on your property’s value to make sure you’re asking for the right rent.

One of the other things we do is once we’ve put the product on the market, if we don’t get calls in the first three, four or five days, we know we’ve priced it wrong. Sometimes we get too many calls and we know we’ve probably underestimated you. The point is that you adjust quickly.

If you’re there for a week and haven’t gotten a single call on the rental market, you’ve overpriced. You have to go down fast. Don’t sit at that price and be stubborn, and say, “Okay, I’m going to get $1,000, I don’t care what happens here,” and wait a month or two and finally go down. Go down quickly. Drop your price quickly if the phone doesn’t ring.

100% Ready to Rent

Some of the other things that we recommend is to make sure that when you have a rental unit it is what I call 100% rental ready. Not 90%, not 80%, not “I’ll do that later, I’ll do that. I know it smells a bit, but you know, just have the tenants come by and we’ll rent it out.” Make sure it’s ready to rent. This is the difference.

When a property is ready to rent, when someone walks by, they’ll say, “How do I get an application? Please give me an application. I love this property. I want it.” If it’s not quite ready, it’s not painted, it’s not vacuumed, it smells a bit, the person will walk by and very politely say, “Thank you. I have a few other properties to view today or tomorrow and I’ll call you back if I’m interested.” and they walk out the door.

That’s the difference, guys. Take the time. Make sure the property is 100% ready. If it needs to be painted, paint it. It can be a layer. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t have to be like your house, your property, but make sure it’s fresh, clean, and smells good.