My name is Tia Vincent and I'm the broker and owner of Roundtable Property Management. Today, we're gonna discuss when is the right time to pre advertise your home? When is it right to advertise? When either the owner or the tenant is still living in the home?
Timeline and Days on Market
The first thing to consider is our timeline. What you don't want to do is advertise more than 45 days out. Oftentimes, owners will come to me with military orders and say, I'm moving out in four months. Let's get it on the market now. What happens is most of the people looking for a rental are looking to move within 30 days. So when your ad goes up four months out, people are calling. But when they ask the moving day, they're not interested in seeing it. Flash forward two months later when we can actually start showing it to qualified tenants, they're looking to move. Then the days on market count has gone way up. So now when people are looking at that advertising, they look at that day's market and go, something's wrong with this home. There's a reason it hasn't rented. It's been on the market for 65 days. So we don't want to do that. We want to try to get you in that 45 day window where most of the tenants are looking to move in within a 30 day timeframe.
Tenant Occupied
Something to consider when you have tenants occupying the home is how cooperative they are. Are they going to answer their phone when I'm doing a 24 hour notice to show? Are they going to make the home clean and orderly when we do the showings? Is is their furniture. Loud and obnoxious? Or is it something neutral that someone can come in and really see themselves living there? If we have a tenant that says, sure, you can show the home, but I go in and the laundry is everywhere and dishes are piled up and it kind of smells funny. That may not put your best foot forward and we may not want to show it at that time.
Another thing to consider when you're dealing with a tenant is maybe the house looks great, but the tenant doesn't want to leave the home while the showing is happening. We understand this. They're not required to leave the home. This is their home. They pay rent for it, but it is very strange for the potential tenant to be walking around with this tenant following them. They don't want to look into bedrooms. They don't want to look into closets because they're in someone's home that's watching them. So if the tenant doesn't want to leave and they're wanting to sit on the couch and chit chat or worse. We've got the tenant that wants to tell them everything. So as you're walking through showing it. Let me tell you about the sink that leaked last year and flooded the floor. Let me tell you about this. That happened. We do not want those tenants that are going to hang out in there. So if they are not going to get out, maybe we don't want to show it at the time.
If you have any questions on whether or not your home is ready to show, just give me a call and we'll go over your options. My name is Tia Vincent and I'm the broker and owner of Roundtable Property Management.
