Why Your Rental Isn’t Leasing (And How to Fix It Fast)

Welcome back to another episode of the Roots Podcast. I'm Max Moore joined by my host Tyler Lingal. Today we're going to teach you how to rent your property well for a marketable rate and get a tenant quickly. We just had our master class event post panel. I'm like talking to all of our clients and everybody in the community out. And I just heard this like lowering murmur of I can't rent my home. For reference, it's August. I have one out on the market right now. Tyler has one. Maybe you have one. and you're stuck in in the mud of how do I get my uh rental rented because I'm I'm dying out here, right? Um and the the sentiment that I gave everybody was like, "Send me send me your property. Don't go midterm rent it. Don't go like panic. Send me the property. Uh on Monday, I'll go through and I'll analyze them." I was greeted by a lot of different approaches to uh listening property. I thought it was fair. We had some that had overlays from property managers. We had some with uh pictures from the roof like trying to advertise that if you're 7 foot, this is what it would look like from the vantage point of being here. We had some that uh did use some good DSLRs, spent 200 bucks on photos. Had some that were the most overpriced by 600 compared to anything near it. There was a lot that I'm like, you're not getting a tenant because you're not putting in the right effort and the energy in the right places. You're worried about greed and saving. So literally, you're saving on photos. You're using chat GBT to write these descriptions. And I know it because there's asterisks all over the place. Like command shiftV if you want those to go away. Zillow does not bold things. Chat GBT's way of putting bold in for the love of God. Command shift V lease. Uh and and the descriptions are are rough. What have you bumped into along the way? I want to go in like the manager specific in leasing. When you're get hand the keys over to a manager, have them post it up. What's some of the things that could be done better? A lot of times they're not on Zillow, which I'm like over 50% are on Zillow. Like you can't just go BLC and apartments. com. Like you need to be on Zillow. Number one, that's big. Yeah. There's no agents taking you that maybe wants to rent out to say homes, right? So get it to the people, right? Dark photos. Like why are they so dark and grainy? I I don't understand. It's like just clear, turn on the lights, shoot it from a waist level DSLR if you can. And then um I think like an important thing is showcasing the neighborhood. Is this a neighborhood you want to be in? Like we started on ours. I um I didn't pay for drone photos, but I like made this mockup thing on Canva that shows Amelia's bread and can't cinema walk to enjoy and had it with like a cool font, new spirit, our brand. And it looks like a young uh entrepreneur is leasing this who wants to have a personal touch on the property, not a old cranky property manager that has all these rules. Yeah. Like they're like no dogs is like the first description line. No pets whatsoever with the stars around it. They're using tragic, right? The kitten tech wants to rent from that. It's not fun. It's not fun. Right. You're living here, so you have to tell. It's legitimately scary. It is. It is scary. Uh some of these places are like, I wouldn't even want to do a tour there, much less rent it for $900 a month. And if you're trying to overcome objections that you may have in your rental, like you have to tell the story of what your of what you own. a story. Yeah. So, I think the the big takeaways that I was just consistently giving people, I felt like was worth sharing on a broader scale is pay for the photos. It's 250 to 300 bucks. If you need a contact, hit me up. I will refer you to somebody. We'll get there tomorrow and we'll fix your pictures. That's going to already have an uptick. Look at the property uh values around you or the the lease values around you. If you've got somebody next door that's leased for 1. 9K and you're out at 2. 1, I'm sorry to tell you, brother, but you're overpriced, right? You got to get down to 1. 8. And here's the math. You jump down 300 bucks, you get the tenant in this month, or you don't get 1. 8 this month, 1. 8K this month, and and you sit and oh, you just lost like I don't even know what's the math off the top of my head. Two two grand total in the year by not dropping your price. Yeah, I don't know if that was right. somebody can put it in the comments below, but you're you are the vacancy will creep and by not making adjustments or pivoting, you're going to to be overtaken. Uh the other thing that I would say is highlight the neighborhood. You did that on your new group. I thought that it was fantastic you doing that. I saw you put like a heat check out. You're like, "Let's sort out 1950. See if we can get somebody that'd be over the moon." Like that's our our excitement rate. And you backed it down to 1,800. Starting to have some success. Everything's good on yours besides I'm just gonna keep dogging you on the photos. Should have I should have got the good photos. Just look on Zillow. There's nobody else doing that and making it inviting. Right. Question. Do you get uh flexible with the requirements in income, credit score, or any of those other requirements? Yeah, last year I did. And uh I was invited last month to uh come to my rental to check it out after a tenant had vacated and they took some souvenirs with them. The stove and fridge and washer and dryer. So that sucked. Uh out a couple grand there. And you know, small claims court, whatever. I'll win and get justice. Um justice will be served. They burnt me. They burnt me bad. And it's because No, I didn't. I didn't do income verification on things. And I realized when she called me, she needed to rent the place by the end of the week. She's like, "I need a lease now." You know why she needed a lease now? Cuz she's getting evicted from her other place. And that was going to be filed, right? And you know what happened when she left mine? Sprinted out the door, did the same thing to another person, right? And that is that that's the burnt point. If somebody's being too urgent about leasing your place, nobody is that excited to rent your rental. I promise you. Mhm. I thought that she was just like over the moon. thought that my place was just, you know, kind of the [ __ ] cuz it's nice. It's a nice little spot. And now I actually I just put mine out at 1450 and was like, "Somebody comes along, great. If not, whatever." I've backed it down now to 1395, starting to get a ton of tours. And that's awesome. Not a single one is worth the the time as far as the income verification goes. And I'm I'm not wavering. I'd rather sit vacant. Right. Yeah. Honestly, you can do more harm putting the wrong person in. Far far more harm than just sitting vacant, right? And and I just had someone apply that was at our typical is three times the amount of monthly rent and income uh net and someone applied at 2. 5. And so I asked three property managers and they said if the other markers were positive, lease it, but if there was any other bad ones, don't. So if they have a 780 score and are making 2. 75%. Yeah, I probably would waver there. Yeah, I don't f around with felonies or past uh evictions, by the way. If people are what you learn through messing around with that, right, on accident, not even knowing, right? Also, and a lot of people have said this that we've met, is check their car. What does their car look like? That if that thing is a piece of trash, if the muffler, guess how they're going to treat their your unit. Seriously. Yeah. Look at their car. Oh, you're saying like just like the up how they've kept up the having like a used, you know, car with the muffler ruffling around, but like you're just saying like it was a clean and taken care of. Yeah. Right. It's a pretty good indicator on how they're going to keep up their unit. Uh I totally agree. I would say also uh and I have our manager do this, but uh I always like in-person showings with them and we've started to have certain questions like, "Hey, what are you what are your goals? I know you're renting right now. Like, what are your goals?" And I want to hear, "Hey, I'm on track. I'm trying to buy a home." Yeah. Taking care of taking care of that and having a trained professional on the other end with you to ask those types of questions is ginormous. The ghost tours, not about it. And for those that don't know, a ghost showing is just when the property manager hands out the lockbox code and the prospective tenant walks it themselves with no one there to escort them or tour them. If you're property manager does ghost tours, my suggestion is we always have a new agent at roots, like whoever it is that would jump over the moon to make a,000 bucks to lease your property and would treat it as if they were listing. And for us, it's great because it's training reps on how to lease a list a property for sale. Yeah, you candidly should have us leasing everything. And I would love to do that because I'm kind of sitting here getting obsessed with how to lease properties and get good tenants. There you have it. We're now leasing. Yeah. Public announcement. Hit us up. We No, seriously. I I was about to lease it for a recent person that bought a new group duplex with me and I was like, "All right, let's let's calm down, Tyler." Because I knew how much better I could do than his manager. And we can get those tips. Yeah. We have agents on our team that want to go make that bread. the managers have a ton of properties and so many different moving arms in their business. Not a lot of them actually have a leasing agent from what I've heard. Or they have one to 75 Yeah. on the market. Like it's not possible. It's not possible. So yeah, I guess uh this was just a free ad and promo on how good we're going to lease your property and how much your listing isn't performing right now. So if you want a tenant, hit us up, drop a like, and subscribe. Peace. Peace.