What do you say to prospective tenants to keep them from even thinking about renting from another landlord? Maybe nothing will help if your property doesn’t fit their needs. But how many do you lose to other landlords? How many prime candidates say “we need to think about it” and end up being gobbled up by another rental property owner?
You can chop that number way down with the preemptive marketing strike.
You maintain your properties with pride; you deal with repairs promptly; you act as Solomon with tenant feuds. Yes, so do a lot of other landlords. The key is, tenants and prospective tenants don’t know that you do. They will if tell them. By the same token, they will not know that other landlords do, either, because other landlords don’t tell them.
It’s how you tell them that matters most. You have to tell them in such a way that it makes them wary of renting from anyone else. You can immediately put all other landlords on the defensive, without their even knowing they have been preempted, if you warn prospective tenants that there are some vital considerations that they need to think about before they make their decision about a place to live.
How about this one. Did you know that most landlords get no training in rental property management at all? It’s true. The vast majority of them have never even heard of an apartment, landlord, or rental owners association, much less attended a class or a meeting. But you have. Why is that important? It means that those other landlords don’t know about the latest trends, techniques and legal issues in property management. Membership enables you to serve your customers, your tenants, better.
So what’s the first thing a prospective tenant will ask another landlord? “Do you belong to your local rental owners association?” What will be the answer? “Well, no, I don’t have time.” Or, “what’s that?”
By setting up a preemptive strike you immediately get tenants thinking in the direction you want them to.
Do you know that many landlords don’t respond to repair complaints the same day? So you say, “we respond to repair complaints within eight hours,” (or whatever). The next landlord they talk to will then be forced into the position of answering a question he or she never though about before. Chances are the answer will not be nearly as powerful as what you told them, because you thought it out first and know what to warn them about.
A couple of others. Did you know that many landlord don’t have a regular maintenance program? That means properties might look a little shabby after a while or things might break in a tenant’s home when preventive maintenance would have prevented it. But you have such a program: as a result your properties are places tenants can be proud to call home.
Did you know that many landlords don’t enforce the rules of the complex consistently? You do because we have found that it makes for a better place to live for all the people who rent from us.
You can probably think of a couple more things you do that you can express in such a way that they will become a preemptive marketing strike. Think of four or five, then use them to warn prospective tenants about the dangers they face renting from just any landlord.