Winter can be a hard time for finding tenants for your North Charleston rental home and can bring about vacancies. But even with the slow market during the winter months, there are still many things you can do to attract future tenants to your property. The idea is to make your property as appealing as possible to ensure your rental home stands out. With these strategies, you can attract tenants to your rental home even during the winter.
Seasonal Marketing
Seasonal marketing is an effective way to fill winter vacancies. You need a bit more than the standard marketing tactics to attract tenants in the winter. You can expand your audience by expanding the scope of where you post. You can also have photographs of your property done by a professional, like Real Property Management Charleston, or you could hire someone to write some great ad copy for you. Doing extra marketing activities can increase your chances of attracting potential tenants to lease your property.
Offer Favorable Terms
Offering favorable terms to potential tenants also increases your chances of renting out your North Charleston rental property in the winter. If your property has many inquiries but few applications, you might want to review your lease documents. If your lease still seems good, you might benefit if you loosened up your terms. Even just minor tweaks can make a difference. Sometimes it can be something as simple as allowing pets and making your property pet friendly, and new tenants would come and look. Other terms, like lease length, could also be an issue. Temporarily shorter leases could help you fill that vacancy immediately, giving you the option to renew the lease on the property in the spring or summer.
Add Incentives
You can make your home more interesting to renters by offering one or more incentives. There are a host of creative incentive ideas. Your new tenant would appreciate a gift card, a wholesale membership, or local freebies. You can also think about reducing their rental rate or making their first month of stay rent-free. In contrast, giving up one month’s rent is actually better for your annual cash flows than just letting your rental home stay vacant the whole winter.
Enlist Help
Additional help goes a long way in effectively marketing your rental property during the winter. Professionals always tell us that word-of-mouth advertising is the best there is. Take advantage of that! Ask willing friends or family to recommend your property to their friends who are looking for a rental home. Social media is also a big help! Create a post about your rental that your friends can share with others. You can also hire a property management company and let them find your next tenant. Property management brands have a wide audience and many resources they can tap into to find tenants efficiently during seasons like this.
Although the challenge to fill a winter vacancy is there, it is still very possible when you have the right strategies. Would you like to learn more about how professional property management could help you reduce vacancies and increase your North Charleston rental homes’ profitability? Contact us today or call us at 843-900-4061.
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