Congratulations! You worked hard, saved up, and finally landed your first rental property. Now the important part: Start getting a return on that investment and find a tenant.
However, landing a qualified and desirable occupant is not always as simple as waving a magic marketing wand. But perhaps the most common mistake made by novice landlords is the amount of time spent on the process.
When you factor in staging, advertising, and communicating/following up with prospects, the hours accumulated can add up in a hurry, with no guarantee of an immediate payoff. Causing further delay is the lack of efficiencies that surface – usually the reason that many first-time investors ultimately give up and hand things over to a professional property management company.
One example of working too hard is chasing every lead. Not only is this a major time consumer, but it can be quite demoralizing if you’ve committed to reaching out, scheduling a showing, and then travel to the property only to discover that they are not qualified. Therefore, working smarter, by pushing the qualifying process up the priority list, could save a ton of frustration on the backend.
The reason that part-time landlords settle for less-than-ideal tenants is often impatience; the fear that limiting options will cause further delays. In fact, the opposite is typically true, especially if you’re too busy dealing with unqualified leads.
Today, there are new online tools that exist to help make a landlords life much easier – and efficient. For starters, you can email every lead with an autoresponder that sends qualifying questions they must complete and return before being able to book a tour. Requests can include access to a credit check, income verification, projected move-in date, and whether they have pets.
Trintals has a platform that was built with efficiency in mind. One time-saving feature is a built-in autoresponder that nudges leads to provide more information. This significantly streamlines the qualification process, and allows the landlord to get to know more about the prospect before investing the time to show the property.
At the end of the day, time is money. You’ve already put the time in to become a property owner. Now it’s time to make it pay off.