How to Build an Effective Rental Listing

The first step to being a successful landlord is knowing how to build a rental listing that can generate qualified leads. In your neighborhood, your online rental listing will be competing with listings for other available unit, so it’s important that your listing is top-notch to catch a tenant’s attention.

Over the years, we’ve learned a lot about what works for finding tenants, as well as what doesn’t. That’s why we’ve developed our own methodology for finding great tenants and more landlord tips below. Let’s take a look.

The Avail Methodology for Finding Tenants

Tenants make quick decisions when looking at rental listings, so it’s important to include information they’re looking for in an easy-to-digest format. We’ve developed a strategy for creating a perfect rental listing in less time:

• Have an eye-catching rental listing title that tells tenants the rent price, number of rooms, and location.
• Provide an informative listing description that entices tenants to want to rent your property.
• Capture beautiful photos of every room and the exterior.

From the photos you display to writing and including the most practical information, tenants want to see and read about everything they’re interested in. What does the unit look like? When is it available? What amenities and utilities are included? Including the right information and having edited, bright photos (and lots of them!) is very important.

What Are the Different Ways to Find Tenants?

There are several ways to find tenants — you can list your unit with a broker, use rental signs outside your property, or publish an online rental listing with the help of property management software. While there are several options, they’re not all equal.

Listing with a broker often costs you the first month’s rent, which is a very expensive option — especially when brokers typically post your listing online themselves. They often charge you a lot of money to do something you can do yourself in minutes.

Rental signs outside your property are only seen by people who pass by, and they can be costly. Printing ads in the newspaper is outdated, so the most effective way to find tenants (and the most common way) is to create an online rental listing yourself.

Why Should You Use an Online Rental Listing to Find Tenants?

Online listings are the best way to advertise your vacant property. Online listings are accessible 24/7 and provide a high level of transparency, which tenants love. As a landlord, deciding where to post your listing is important to get as much visibility as possible. This often means listing your rental unit on as many high-quality sites as possible.

When you create and post your rental listing with Avail, your listing is syndicated to over a dozen top rental listing platforms at once. Not only does this save you time, but landlords using Avail on average generate 18 leads in the first two weeks. After you create your listing, it typically takes only a few hours for the posting to go live on our partner sites, making it easier to find qualified leads for your property.

How to Build an Effective Rental Listing

Rental listings are comprised of a catchy title, a paragraph-long description, a list of amenities, and photos of the unit. The title should be informative, attention-grabbing, and straight-forward. On some sites, like Zillow, the title is just the property’s address. But titles should do more than showcase the address — they have more potential and purpose than that.

Here’s our formula for creating a catchy rental listing title:

$$$$$ – ## Bed / ## Bath apartment|house|condo|duplex in neighborhood with great features.

With our formula, you’re immediately telling prospective tenants key factors: the monthly rental price, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, what type of space it is, location, and the unit’s best feature. Here’s an example of the formula in use:

$2,500 – 2 Bed / 2 Bath condo in Old Town Chicago with skyline views of the city and lake.

When Should I List My Rental Property?

After spending time perfecting your rental listing, the next step is posting it. You should post your listing 60 days before a tenant moves in for optimal lead generation. Remember, if you have existing tenants living in your rental property, you’ll want to start discussing a lease renewal with them 90 days before the current lease ends. If your tenants are renewing, then there’s no need to find new tenants, but you should start the conversation about renewals early so you have a plan ahead of time.

Assuming you aren’t renewing your lease, then you should be looking for a new tenant sooner rather than later, using the 60-day rule. The rule mirrors the policy that tenants are often required to give 60-day notice of moving out. In other words, 60 days out is when you should know if you are renewing with a current tenant or finding a new one.

The 60-day rule is also designed to optimize your listing’s relevance. Most tenants search for an apartment 45-60 days before they move, so your listing will be most relevant is the 45-60 day window. If you post any later, you risk losing potential leads because they couldn’t find your listing.

Here’s an example timeline:

How Do I Create a Homepage for My Rental Listing?

In addition to creating an online listing on popular rental listing sites, you should create a homepage for your listing. This is easy to do if you are an Avail landlord: You simply click “Your Company Page,” follow the easy steps, and create your very own homepage. Your reputation as a sophisticated landlord is bolstered when you create your own homepage, and it’s also an easy page to share on social media.

Here’s an example of a homepage created with Avail:

How Can I Market My Rental Listing on Social Media?

Because social networking is so extensively used, we recommend posting your listing on social media channels like Facebook and Twitter in order to reach a larger audience. Share your listing with a quick description, enticing photos, and a link to your listing.

When sharing your rental listing on social media, it’s essential to include pictures. You can even post a walk-through video of your unit to take tenants on a virtual tour. Posting on social media will increase the number of people who see your property, and therefore decrease your chances of vacancy.

At Avail, we make it easy to share your listing on social media. As soon as you click, ‘Publish Your Listing,’ a box appears providing a link to your listing that you can share. You can easily click the Facebook, Twitter, or email icon to immediately share your listing.

Generate High-Quality Leads With Your Rental Listing

Ultimately, you care about creating a great listing because you want to generate a lot of high-quality tenant leads. Your listing is your first impression as a landlord, and with the right information and photos, you can secure a lot of interest from qualified tenants.

We want to help you create the best listing by saving you time and helping you throughout the entire process. Get started today by creating an online rental listing with Avail.

Have you already created a listing and want help with the next steps? Check out our articles on managing rental leads and showing your property.