One of our strengths here at Ridgeline is our ability to lease properties quickly to qualified tenants at strong rent rates year-round. Here in Central Oregon, leasing is seasonal. This is due to the weather and holidays. On top of that, we have had to contend with a lot of new apartments coming to market, such as The Jackstraw, which added 5% to Bend’s total number of apartments. We are going to go through some of the systems & strategies that help us successfully lease whenever.
Pricing
The first step is finding the right rental price. We make sure to find appropriate comps on Zillow and other sites to determine the best price. We also use a service called rentometer that helps aggregate rental data across the web to help determine what ours should rent for. We like this service because it aggregates data from when the listing was taken off the market, giving us more accurate information on the prices units were rented for. Along with this, our experience leasing units in the market helps us guide and build confidence in our rental pricing. Ultimately, we need to price the unit right out of the gate to make it attractive to prospective tenants, yet not leave money on the table.
Online Listing
The quality of the listing goes a long way. These days, it isn’t cost-prohibitive to hire a professional to take high-quality photos and create virtual tours for a listing. It makes all the difference in attracting tenants. It’s also affordable to get virtual staging done that looks really good. We spend some time on the description to make sure it’s inviting to anyone looking and keep within fair housing rules. Also describes everything the tenant might want to know, including whether pets are accepted, lease terms, deposit, move-in date, what else they pay for, and parking. Here is an example of one of our listings. Once we have a good listing, we make sure to post it on all websites, though most of our leads come from Facebook Marketplace, Apartments.com, and Zillow. That being said, we will spend some dollars boosting the listing on those websites. All this combined effort makes for a strong online presence for the listing.
Leads/Showings and Follow-up
This is the most crucial part. Once we start getting leads, we get back to people quickly, which is of utmost importance. In today’s world, people have short attention spans, and so we attack while the iron is hot. We use technology to aggregate all our messages from different websites into a single place, enabling us to track and respond more efficiently. Make sure no falls through the cracks. We also believe in showing the unit before an application is put in. A big part of it is showing the unit, selling them on it, giving the human touch, and also selling them on ridgeline that we are a different PM company that will actually be there to take care of them. Then, after showing, follow up on any questions they had and see if they will apply. Just keeping it at the front of their mind and nurturing the lead until it becomes an application. Once they apply, jump on working through the application thoroughly, and once approved, get them the lease quickly and seamlessly. Once the lease is signed and they have paid the security deposit, it’s a done deal. You need to be on the ball throughout the whole process. It also helps that our PM software automates and streamlines much of this process. It helps us and makes the leasing process easier for tenants. We will circle up with any stale leads to confirm they are not interested and find out why, to see if there’s anything we can mitigate. Being responsive and making sure the prospective tenants are taken care of is the name of the game.
Ultimately, this is a high-level overview with some specifics on how we can lease units quickly to qualified people at any time, and how we take that extra attention and detail one cut above the rest, which shows in our ability to lease units quickly to the right people.