Chicago Real Estate Owners: How to Effectively Use Craigslist for Tenants

If you are a landlord, one of your biggest issues can be high turnover and vacancies. Many investors are great at buying buildings, fixing them up and putting up “for rent” signs but they are not great at marketing the units. What good does it do to have a beautiful building but nobody in them? It’s pointless! For a while now I have been helping investors and property management companies with their marketing in order to find tenants faster, and ensure that they are low risk.

Nowadays it is not as simple as putting an ad in the paper because lets face it, less people are buying the paper and reading it. The best choice is Craigslist.org. I love craigslist, but many landlords do not know how to effectively use this website. The listings on craigslist are listed based on when it was posted, the most recent post the higher it is listed. As the day progresses, that same listing will be on page 3 or 4. Most landlords are satisfied posting once, but fail to realize that their ad will be irrelevant within 8 hours.

Quick Tip: Create 2 accounts with craigslist. Post the first ad in the morning and paste the same ad in your second account at 5 30 pm. If you use a product like vflyer.com, you can see at what times of day the ad is being viewed most and it’s always going to be between 6-10pm.

I suggest you use a flip video camera to record the apartment and up load it to youtube. This allows people to not only see the pictures, but get a better 1^st time experience of the place. Place the youtube link into your ad For example check out a video I did that got over 300 views in 20 days: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1cmzzdae08 I found the landlord a tenant in less than 15 business days.

The headline is important, make sure you are to the point give a highlight and make it witty such as, “3 bed + 2 bath + Utilities Included + Video Tour = Yours”. This headline will get attention.

Make 3 different versions of the same ad and post it once a day on each account for 3 days. To go your account, view your postings, and delete the ad you placed 4 days ago. Once you hit the delete button, hit the “back” arrow on your browser and craigslist will allow you to repost the same ad without having to redo the whole thing. Repeat and repost until you get the responses you feel comfortable with.

Once you get people calling you and asking to view the apartment make sure you have the following available forms: A tenant verification sheet, employment verification form, background and credit check authorization form, and a cosigner sheet if needed. Application fee should be 20-25 dollars cash. Go to CitiCredit.Net where it is only $12.95 for a quick credit check, and get the info.

Enjoy!

RJCid

www.ChicagoCashFlowProperties.com