Marketing rental property — the hero photo
We’ve been having trouble with listings on Zillow lately. So I went online “through the front door” to check on one of our own listings. While I was researching that my eyes fell on the photo below. This is the hero image for a rental property. (Definitely not one of ours!) Now if you are looking for a home, is that the sort of image that would inspire you to click through to get more info? Me neither. Marketing a rental requires expertise and attention to detail.
It underscores the value a good property manager can add to a rental. As a property manager we are constantly taking the little things we do for granted. And after 35 years of managing property, and making small refinements along the way, best practices have become second nature. Property management is a very complicated and intricate process.
It involves multiple tasks requiring vastly different skills:
- Advertising/marketing (as noted above!)
- Finance
- Collections
- Law
- Maintenance
- Reporting
- To name just a few
It is a rare individual who possesses these skills in sufficient quality and quantity to actually pull it off, and manage well. Add to that the stop-and-go nature of this part time job and it’s no wonder landlords find themselves in hot water with their rentals on a regular basis. The sad part is that many of them sell out of frustration, and lose out on the many benefits owning rental property can provide.
We get it. Paying someone else to do something you (think you) can do yourself seems like a waste of money. Kind of like law. You can represent yourself in court. But do you have the expectation of a similar outcome? I doubt it. The same holds true with property management and marketing rental property. If only property management were as simple as collecting rent every month!
If you are getting fed up with your rental, or rental listing, or want to improve your quality of life, drop us a quick message. We’ll follow up to see if we are a good fit for each other, and how we can help.