You are a landlord with properties that have been vacant for some time now. I am guessing you've tried the typical steps indicated below:
1) You've placed listings on your local newspapers and various classified ads' pages; and
2) You've tried Craigslist.org
Those are the most mainstream methods for getting that phone call from a potential tenant, right? As a matter of fact, you've repeated steps 1 and 2 more than once but your apartments or rooms are still vacant. What are you doing wrong?
1) NO ONE, I REPEAT, NO ONE reads the local newspapers or classified pages for apartments anymore. Those are the pre-dinosaur days.
2) Craigslist.org is flawed. They allow anyone to post, anytime, anywhere, and as many as they want; nothing is specific enough besides their geographic database. For example, if you want to make a listing for the nearby university, or if you want to advertise a short term lease of several months to a semester, then it doesn't make sense for your listing to be placed on the same pages as that broker who placed hundreds of different listings around yours? What do I suggest?
That you simply need to narrow down your sources when you advertise. If you want to advertise your upscale apartments in NYC to the wealthy crowd, then narrow down to the likes of citycondos.com or citycenter.com. If you want to narrow your market down to students because you want short leases, a semester, or a year, then narrow down to sites that offer the free search feature to students, i.e. http://cribs4students (my own).
Most importantly, however, you should not waste the countless hours putting up posters, flyers. Chances are, no one will read it because those posters and flyers get discarded or taken off on a daily or weekly basis.
For more information on apartment searching, you can visit http://www.cribs4students.com. Cribs4Students is another source for apartment searching and listing for college students and landlords. You can post and search for apartments, rooms, and sublets free of charge. It also supports both a video and image uploading feature.
Michael V. Dang and Andres A. Mok are the creators of Cribs4Students.com. It was founded in 2006 and officially launched on February 25, 2007
Living Waters Christian Fellowship
¶ 9:41 AM
