Optimize your Rentals Property Listings for more VIEWS

Is your listing Optimized? As search engines index your listing(s) they are looking for certain keywords in your text. Example: if you are offering an apartment in Cleveland you many want to place in the description or listing title, "Apartment in Cleveland". By having your keywords or key phrases grouped together you will increase your chances of your listing ranking well and getting VIEWS. For a better idea on what keywords work best, visit Google Suggest and begin entering some words. The more text you have in your listings the more content the search engines will spider.

Do you have a photo in your listing? Photos can be just as important as the listing description. We highly recommend uploading photos of your rentals with your listing

Homes for Rent , Super Bowl 2008 Houses?

Today you can find just about anything on Ebay and with the Super Bowl only months away its no shock that its loaded with NFL items already. In fact, not only can you get Super Bowl tickets months in advance, you can also bid on a reservation for a rental HOUSE near the stadium.

Already popping up on various auctions are homes for rent in Glendale Arizona near Super Bowl Stadium. Some of these homes are auctioning at $15000 for 1 WEEK !! (for a 2000 sq ft home) So for you landlord or property managers in Glendale with vacancies coming up you may want to hold off a bit before you turn the property over for a long term lease.

... We'll keep an eye on this to see what these properties are really renting for.

How much Rent should I charge?

With a soft real estate market, more and more people are looking to convert their homes into rental properties. The big question is "How much rent Can I get?"

The guys at iiproperty have put together a handy tool for showing rental comps in various areas throughout the country.

Visit www.Rentometer.com for more information.

Send mail to your tenants using Postful.com | email to mail service

In this electronic world its difficult to find time to do things that do not involve a computer. So when it comes time to mailing out leases, tenant applications, late notices we find ourselves 'getting to it later'. Often times when we do get the time we're missing stamps or the toner in your printer ran out of black ink.

The guys over at Postful.com have come up with a way to convert E-mail into Snail mail.

1. Easily set up an acct
2. Send an email with the address you are sending to in the subject line
3. in the body of the email type in the information to be placed in the letter, or send an attachment.
   
4. Send it, accept the proof, and your done!

They will then print it, stuff the envelope, put a stamp on it and send away.

Cost: $.99 per letter. When you factor in time, stamps, envelopes, toner and paper.. you'll find its cheaper to use this method instead of doing the labor yourself.

Take a look at their site for more information.
http://www.postful.com/

Great Phone and Fax service for Managing Rentals

If you are a Do-it-yourself Landlord or Property Manager a Virtual office is the way to go. A Virtual Office or Virtual PBX, as it is sometimes called, is a Phone system and fax service wrapped into one. For roughly $10/mon (less than an dedicated phone line) you can get a professional fax and phone service including extensions.

How it can be useful to the average landlord or manager?

• Various Phone extensions which can forward to any phone or multiple phones if needed. So you can have an emergency maintenance line forward to your mobile phone or home phone without the user ever knowing that happened.
  
• Use the included screening service to see who is calling before you answer. You can then send to voicemail or accept the call all while the user listens to music of your choice.
  
• Have your prospect calls for vacancies go to voice mail for retrieval later while you are on the go.
  
• Have a dedicated extension for various departments or people. Ie: maintenance call go to Maintenance man.
  
• Receive faxes in your email inbox or access them online anywhere
• Fax service great for sending/receiving applications and leases.
  
• Great for hiding your home phone or mobile phone yet getting your work done.
  

Take a look at GotVmail for an excellent video demo of some ways to use your Virtual office.

Happy Thanksgiving | Tenant Reminders, lock up, heat ...

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

REMINDER:
If your tenants are traveling this week, you may want to give them a quick email or phone call reminding them to make sure they turn the heat back and not off (where applicable). Also to be sure to lock up securely. In college markets throughout the US, many students for off campus housing will be leaving town and going back home. This opens the door for some of the highest crime rates in those areas.

We hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday.

Tenant Screening & Credit Checks for tenants

There are quite a few services online for tenant screening. One in particular we have been using for years is called CitiCredit.net. What has been nice with this service is you have the information instantly.

Some members suggest

• MrLandlord.com
• Free Tenant Report Services.com

Has anyone tried these services or have suggestions for any others?

For Rent Signs Still useful !

With a large surplus in the housing market more and more people are turning their properties into rentals with hopes that the real estate market will rebound. This of course puts more rentals out there so you need to explore several avenues when marketing your property.

Listing rentals with us is free and we currently publish our listings on several other sites such as GoogleBase, oodle, Vast, Edgieo and more. So we really try and get the word out on the net for you. In accordance we also suggest the good ole fashion for rent sign. The obvious benefits of this is to grab anyones attention as they drive by however most of the signs we see do not have an Information tube attached with them.

The outside of your rental home gives people a general idea what the inside of the house/apartment looks like as far as size and how its maintained. This unfortunately doesn't answer some of the important questions such as: how much or whats included so you're going to be stuck fielding calls. With your listing on RentalsForRent.com you get a printable flier that you can place in your info tube. This will give the potential tenant a quick photo of your property, property descriptions, amenities, pricing and more. This should help eliminate late night or untimely calls asking if you allow tenants with 200 pound dogs and so on.

To get your flier:
Make sure you are signed into your account and then find your listing by typing in the Rental ID # on the rentals page. Select the PRINT icon on your listing which should take you to a Printable version of your ad. Thats it!

Its an easy opportunity that we often overlook when filling our properties.

- Good luck

Talk with 1000's of Landlords/Property Managers

The founders of Rentals For Rent have been members of an outstanding forum for many years now called: TheCreativeInvestor.com. TCI is probably the largest Real Estate Investment Community out there and has some outstanding mmbers. The community has everything from real estate attorneys to cpa's who cater towards the real estate industry. Be sure to give them a visit at http://www.thecreativeinvestor.com/residential/

Inspired by Dave DugDale of RentVine.com

Our blog was inspired by the efforts of Dave Dugdale at RentVine.com and his blog.

Dave does an outstanding job of marketing his site and reporting the latest news within the industry. Dave operates as a one man show and is taking on some of the large conglomerates such as Rentals.com and RentalHomesPlus.com.

Good Job Dave! Hopefully this inbound link will give you a little boost within Google.

Renting to College Students

In our last post we discussed renting to college students and offering off campus housing. I'm sure many of you need to clear your throats at the thought of renting to college students however it can be VERY lucrative and more secure than you think.

Sure college students are a little harder on a house than families and they don't have any credit, or care for credit to check to see how they pay their bills. - this could work in your favor.

• College students don't have credit & in most cases have family members pay for tuition and housing- why not make the parent/guardian co-sign?
• With college rentals you could have 3 or 4 sources of income per property. With a family if the main member loses his job you could be facing a serious problem
• College students don't care for properties well, we know this and so do they. Because of that they pay a premium for off campus housing.
  
• Low vacancy rate with college rentals.
  
• Turn overs can be relatively easy when students are from out of state. This leaves the summer months typically open for any repairs WHILE you collect rent

Any thoughts?

Close to University, Advertise Early.

This time of the year the rental housing typically drops off a bit however off campus college housing begins to go through the roof. In many cases college rentals run their leases from June to June. if you are in an area where there is a shortage of off campus housing you may want to list your house for rent early.

by January of 2008 we would have had all of our leases filled for the following school year which is June 2008 to May 2009 - ljinvestments.com

If you home is located in or around a college town you may want to consider renting to college students.

Propertyware.com | Property management Software

If you manage several properties or hundred of properties, an excellent property management software is Propertyware.com.

This is an online piece of software that will manage everything from retrieving maintenance requests via your own personal website (provided) to the money in and money out. Full features for creating tenant documents via mail merges and tracking who owes what. View their online demo to learn more about this software.

Put your tenant Database online with google (free)

If you manage or own a handful of rentals, Excel is probably your tool of choice for managing your tenants. The only down side is when you are at work, home, vacation or away from that computer which holds the files you don't have access to that information.

Google makes this easy. Google Documents will allow you to upload your excel file to your google account so that it can be edited anywhere you have internet access. Its safe and secure and only those people you choose can view it.

If you partnered with someone on those rentals and want to share access you can do so in real time. So if your husband or wife helps with the rentals while you work, you can share that database and change things on the fly.

Rentals For Rent jumps on Blog Wagon

Welcome to the blog lines of Rentals For Rent.com. R4R is a rental property and apartment listing site which is absolutely FREE to use. Our difference versus other free classified sites is that we focus solely on rental homes and properties.

As with the beta version of any project there are fixes, upgrades and feedback that is needed. Our blog was designed to pass this information along and get some feedback from our viewers at the same time.

We also have a great deal of tips for Landlords and property manages to help simplify the management of their properties using various tools and tips of the industry. Our founders have been in the property management industry for many many year and currently uses this tool everyday to get vacancies filled fast!

Contact us if you have any questions.