A little over two years ago we set out to find how to rent houses fast and for more money and found it takes a combination of high tech marketing and some old fashioned principles like telling the truth, up front and often.
As a Realtor or landlord there are always questions you would just as soon never came up.
What is the neighborhood like? How about the roof? How long has this been vacant? There are always questions that they will ask that you would just as soon not answer. Bite the bullet and tell the truth.
Why? First with the availability of information today, they may well know and it is a test. Second, it is what it is. And if you lie about things they have already checked, they will believe you may be lying about things they do not know about.
But, more importantly, if you tell the truth, you may be starting the foundation of a relationship that will get you referrals and even if the current house does not fit needs, another of your houses may. But only if they trust you.
We had an especially obnoxious gentleman look at one of our houses and there was nothing about the house that he liked and shared his displeasure with me. I thought he liked me as much as he did the house. He finally said he would think about it and I knew we would never hear from him again. And we didn’t.
But two days later a young lady as nice as he was not, called on the house, loved it, and in a few days was renting the house. We asked which of our ads she had seen and she had seen no ads, but a friend at work had recommended it to her. “He looked at the house two days ago,” she said “and told me how nice it was.”
So tell them the house has been vacant for three months, or whatever the truth is, and tell them the roof is at the end of its economic life and will have to be replaced or have expensive repairs soon—if that is the case. They know that already or they would not have asked. Tell the truth and they have nowhere to go with the discussion, other than to say maybe they can work with it.
What is the neighborhood like? How do you answer that? The question is far too vague. Narrow the question down, using the echo technique. Repeat the phrase they said with a rising inflection at the end of the word like. “What is the neighborhood like?” You echo what they said and look serious and shut up.
“Yeah, is it safe and quiet?” Tell the truth. You do not live here. You do not know. Maybe you live next door and you do know. Tell the truth if you know. If you do not tell them to check with the sheriff or police, ask neighbors and come back to look at different times of the day.
Tell the truth when you know it and when you do not know the answer tell them that as well and how they can check using their own standards.
Telling the truth may not always get the house rented but if not it will establish you as someone they would like to deal with in the future and you may rent them another house fast and for more money some day if you get them on your email renters list.
Author Resource:
George Beardsley has written extensively about finance and business starting as a financial reporter for the Chicago Tribune and was an editor for the publishing firm Dow-Jones, Irwin and is now a landlord in Florida. He has just published a new eBook called “911 for Landlords” available at http://www.911forlandlords.com with the information he learned during the last two years which has reduced his vacancies rates from 20 per cent to often zero.
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