7 Tips for Listing Rental Property on Zillow Rental Manager
In this video, I'm going to provide you seven easy steps for you to list your rental property fast and for free on Zillow rental manager.
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It's crazy to say but I've been a real estate investor for four years now and I've gone through tenant turnovers as most investors do. But trial and error, I've been able to narrow down which strategies to take to rent a property at a competitive price while getting exceptional applications. In this video, I'm going to provide you seven easy steps for you to list your rental property fast and for free on Zillow rental manager. My mission with this channel is to simplify success for you and ideally help you avoid a lot of the mistakes that I made. And so I want to help you build a data driven business that you can scale with systems and processes. And if that's exciting for you, be sure to hit the like button so we can reach more people. And be sure to subscribe for new videos every single week. Alright, let's get started.
Unknown Speaker 0:54
About three years ago, I moved into my second property and first ever in Tampa, Florida area. After one year of living in the property, I made my move to rent it out. Things went really well until they didn't. My tenants had to break their rental lease as they were a military family and had to move. One week after moving out hurricane Ian came and caused destruction to parts of West Florida, including to the roof of my rental property. I was scrambling to fix a property listed and get qualified tenants in October of 2020. To ultimately the listing sat longer than I would have liked and had limited qualified tenants. So fast forward now summer 2023, they got me thinking, What can I do better to make sure that the next time around, I wouldn't be having my listing sit as long and have to make a reduction. So rental tip number one is listing your property in the summertime. So the property that I was renting out was in October of 2022, which was the fall and in the fall, not many families move. So I have a three bedroom, two bathroom home that caters mostly towards families, or couples who maybe work from home and want that additional bedroom. The reason why they're not looking to move in the fall is because of the school season. Most people also don't like to move in the fall because it's cold. So it's good to have your listing in the summertime. So in this case, what I did in October was I went through a month to month lease with a new tenant, which I normally do not do with the caveat that for the new tenant, their lease would expire in early summertime late spring. So I'd be able to listen again to a higher pool of applicants. rental listing. Tip number two is bright listing photos. So I initially thought that if I got a Canon camera, I'd be able to take beautiful photos and would have the best listing photos around. Problem is I don't know how to use a Canon camera. So as a newbie, I just took the camera took some shots. And from what you could see, it actually is not even close to being spectacular. This is the kitchen here. And we could look at some other photos where it's kind of dark, can't really see the full scope of the room doesn't really show off the property. So these were my listings photos in October. But I decided this time around when I was listening it in summer of 2023 to use my new iPhone. So going from a Canon camera to an iPhone. But yes, I was able to get better quality because it was easier for me to understand how to use the camera and get wider views. So if we look at those photos here, we could see it's also vacant, which is a bit of a plus that the photos make the room and space look bigger. And that same kitchen also looks a lot brighter. So the way I was able to make my photos look even brighter was using a free application called photos on Mac. So if you have an iPhone, your picture saved to photos and if you sync it with your Mac, you will be able to get these photos automatically when you open up your computer. So from here what I did say this photo I went to this little enhance button. Again I am not a photographer by any means. So I need the most easiest way to get this looking across nicely. Then I went to edit and just adjusted the light a little bit more to make these photos look a little bit brighter from what they looked like previously. So if you see done and what it looked like beforehand, it's a little bit lighter than the original photo which really helps to come across for tenants when looking at your abstain. Rental Property. Tip number three is using AI for listing description. So initially when I put my property back up for rent in October 20
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May 22, I still use her initial listing description from when I purchased the property as the actual home buyer. As you can see from this original description, it's really tailored for someone who is owning the property. For example, the paint choices are on trend, the kitchen is exquisite, with designer white cabinets tucked with Crown granite counters, stainless appliances, huge center island for breakfast, bar, seating, etc. There's so many words in there that aren't really that useful for a tenant to quickly grasp, hey, what appliances does it have? What would I be responsible for? What would an owner be responsible for and so on. So instead, I use Chachi, pte in order to construct a new description, which we could see on the right hand side. So quickly just states the highlights of three bed two bath in a gated community as well some of the highlights that I had previously, of what the kitchen is as well as the great room, but not to that level of detail that we had previously, and goes a little bit more deeply into what the monthly rent is as it if pedagogy trouble or not. And then lastly going into location. So this description really helps where previously it was all about location, community Details, details about the property, or now it's more so like details about the property, then specifically for the tenant, what's relevant to them in terms of security deposit, lease term. And then lastly, the location description. Tip number four is rental price. So I typically use Zillow rental manager as well as some other tools like rent cast, and stay tuned for that one, to see what the median rent is for the given area and what I should be listing my rental property for. So in this case, the Riverview Florida area, which is a suburb outside of Tampa, the median rent for a three bedroom home is $2,300. Now I know that my property has a bonus room. So essentially, it's like four spaces of rooms, with three of them having closets of being true bedrooms. So in this case, I know that I could likely increase my rents a bit and not be at that median price. And I also see that the market temperature is relatively warm, meaning there still a high level of rental demand. Now previously, I have rented my property out for I believe, 2500. And I had to knock that down by $50. And in this case, I realized the trick is one, if you go to your rental listings for your given town, you're going to see all the listings, say on Zillow on the right hand side,
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then what I started to do was click on some of these properties. So for example, if I click on this one, I could see here that this is listed by a management company. Now a property management company what their bread and butter is, is listing properties and working with tenants. So I kind of want to just to piggyback on what their strategy was, since they probably know best in this area. From what I could see, as I was clicking through the properties looking to see who owned it looking to see which ones were property managers, I noticed that a lot of them have the price knocked down by $5, so that you remain in the tenant search. So if a tenant is searching for properties that are no more than 2400, for example, if you see this one on the bottom right, it would meet that criteria, even though it's only $5 less. So in this case, I rented my property instead of for 2500, which I couldn't get the last time to 2495 So only $5 off, and that had a flood of more rental applicants. Tip number five is make sure you have a rental property sheet. If you're renting via Zillow, which is free and highly recommended. I have previous videos on how to do that instead of the lease, you will get this property listing sheet for free. So what the tenant and what you could print out for them is the summary of the home how many bedrooms square footage, if laundry is a new unit, for example, and what other amenities you may have. You may be thinking, Well, if the tenant or rental applicant could see this on their own on whatever app they're using when they find my listing. Why do I provide the lists anyway? Well, they may be looking at say for rental properties in a given day, they're going to forget which one was yours potentially. So by having this property sheet, you give the facts right away as well. If you're using Zillow Rentals, it provides a QR code to make it easy for them to apply. Now what I personally do is a mixture of these two so I also have my own property sheet, as you can see here where I have the overview of the property at
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imputes the rent including beds, baths, and square footage, when that started the leases, then I go into a little bit more detail about the community itself. So the community that I have the property in is a gated community has a dog park, it has a biweekly food truck. And this helps applicants to understand the community of the area. So especially if it's going to be in a suburb neighborhood, I would suggest to put these neighborhood amenities. And I also list here what's close to so any shopping, or food is also mentioned, as well as close highways, since a lot of rental applicants typically will have some sort of job they have to commute to, and they would prefer to be somewhere close to highways, so it's close for them to get to work. I also add some activities to and then towards the back of the sheet is where I put more detail on what my requirements are, which includes all adults to be able to apply. So this sheet, one presents it to the applicant when they're touring the property just gives a great overview to be very professional in terms of what their requirements are, but also provide that sunrays so that applicants remember your property. Tip number six is offering flexibility for rental applicants. And this comes in two forms first, when they're touring the property itself. So traditionally, I would always be on site for a property, because it usually is the case where I live in the property rented out. And I want to make sure that my stuff is safe. However, in this case, the property itself was actually vacant, as my previous tenants had already moved. So instead of having to go back and forth on Messenger for Zillow, rental manager, to decide on a time to meet the tenants, I actually implemented a Smart Lock to make it easier for them to enter and do a self tour on their own. You may be thinking, oh, man, they can destroy the property that way. But typically, that actually isn't really the case. I also had the property in a gated community. So it made me feel more safe as well. And if you're thinking, Well, how much is that going to put me out, if I get a lock, that's a smart lock. If you go on Amazon, they can range anywhere from $32 to $230, which can get a little bit more pricey. And in my case, I wanted a simple Smart Lock entering codes, I can change the code based on who the applicant could be. And in that case, I went with an HU tools, lock, but you can go many different routes. The one I would say to not do is August home as I've had that in prior rentals, and it just really not that great of a product. And
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the way it turns is like super slow. So it would have a lot of issues with the motor when I used to use it at least a couple years ago. Then the second part of flexibility was a question I would get from a lot of rental applicants. Hey, I want to move in August 1, which is say a Tuesday. But it's going to be a lot easier for me to move on a weekend. So maybe that prior Saturday, do you have any availability for me to move in a little bit earlier, but had the lease start August 1, and this case, if the property is vacant, I will always say yes, because it's only three or four days extra a tenant is in there. It gets me off of the Water and Electric Bill and provides them that flexibility. That could be the reason why they choose your property over another property. So last but not least, naturally, my favorite tip is number seven, which is getting to know the rental applicants, I typically ask them questions when the rental applicant is looking to tour the property or afterwards when they have questions, possibly giving them a call. And in that process, I get to know them a little bit more as to where they're moving from and why they're moving to the given area. This is where I educate them a bit more. And if they're already familiar with the area, I get to kind of get on a basis of knowledge where we feel very comfortable with one another. So let me give you an example here in the town that I have my property which is Riverview, Florida, it's fairly large. So I'll ask the applicant, Hey, have you lived in river view before? If they say no? Or if they say yes, then I say well, then in this case you would either know or not know that river view is a very large town, you can be in one part of it and then drive 20 minutes and be in a whole other part of the same exact town. Now what's key to understand here is that when you're living in Riverview, regardless if you choose my property or not to live in, I highly suggest that you try to live close to one of the exits on 301 Or I 75. Otherwise it's going to be very difficult for commuting and also getting out of the town in general if you want to do weekend trips like say going to the beach. And this case I also state that the bay
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benefit of this property is that it is only five minutes away from major highways. So I'm preface, again, whether you choose my property or not, I highly suggest that you do choose one that has good transportation. And if you need recommendations on what streets to look out for, I could provide that as well for good transportation. And that really, really helps to resonate with the residents because one, I've invasively eliminated a whole pool of potential properties for them to look at. That may be beautiful, but, you know, 20 minutes away from the highway. And I'm kind of also stating what the main benefits of my property is, which is transportation. That's one of my strategies that I take when I invest in properties in general, which you can watch previous videos on. So with that, I provide you seven different steps. As a recap, list your property in the summertime, use bright photos, use AI for a list and description. Knock off your price by $5 instead of rounding it to the nearest 100. Use a rental property sheet, provide rental applicants flexibility, like a self tour and get to know them a little bit more while being able to emphasize what the positives of your property is. If you felt that this video helped and please hit the like button below as well. I love to hear the comments as I'm always trying to learn myself and how to be a better landlord of what strategies you may take. And as well if you are a rental applicant, what are some things that you look out for when you decide I'm rather live in this property versus another one? Thanks so much for watching.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai