5 Dos and Don’ts When Listing Your Property for Rent
On Long Island, many homeowners are interested in listing their homes for rent - and it’s a good idea! Listing your mother/daughter apartment, legal basement apartment, or entire home for rent is a great way to make supplemental income and offset expenses for the property. That being said, renting can be a tricky prospect if you’ve never done it before. As a real estate salesperson who helps my clients list their properties for rent on Long Island, I’ve heard lots of not-so-great anecdotes about bad tenants and uninformed landlords.
Here are my top five dos and don’ts for listing your property for rent on Long Island:
DO screen your tenants.
You NEED to vet your tenants ahead of time - don’t just rely on putting up an ad and hoping that good people will come through for you. Screening your tenants is your first line of defense against major headaches down the line. If you partner with an agent to list your home or apartment for rent, the agent will help you find a tenant and will do the vetting and background checks. They’ll then present you with only prospective tenants who’ve passed the screening.
DON’T forego a contract.
I don’t care who’s moving into your rental, you still need a contract in place. In fact, having a close friend or family member move in without a contract could even lead to more awkward conversations if something goes wrong. Connecting with a knowledgable real estate attorney is key, and not having a solid contract will lead to trouble down the road. Your real estate agent can likely recommend trusted real estate attorneys with whom they’ve worked in the past.
DO price your rental competitively.
No one wants to leave money on the table, but you also don’t want to price yourself out of the market and have an empty property not making you any revenue for months on end. If you work with an agent like Jessica Sullivan Real Estate, we check comps (other properties in the neighborhood similar to yours that are also for rent) to help figure out a competitive rent. We can also help you negotiate the rent if the prospective tenant counter offers.
DON’T take a few quick iPhone photos and call it a day.
Photos sell a property, period. If your listing has dark, blurry, poorly lit, or poorly staged photos, you won’t get as many inquiries for showings and your property will sit on the rental market longer. You want your property to be clean, clear of clutter or any “background noise” (get rid of the pile of clothes on the armchair), and lit well. At Jessica Sullivan Real Estate, we’re uniquely situated for the online listing market - with a BA in commercial photography, I’m an expert at shooting my listings to look their best.
DO market your property well.
The first rule of marketing real estate listings is to put them where your target tenant is looking. If you don’t want a sketchy person off Craigslist, don’t put your listing on Craigslist. If you have a beautiful home for rent and want real estate agents to show it to their clients seeking a high end rental, it should be listed in the appropriate places. Novice landlords will post their listings on Facebook and rely on friends and family to help them find a tenant, but that only goes so far. A real estate agent will have the network and tools to promote your listing far and wide. At Jessica Sullivan Real Estate, we work as hard to promote and market our rental listings as we do our properties for sale.
What else should you know?
You don’t want to make rookie mistakes when listing your property for rent - landlord/tenant laws are complex, and the last thing you want is your income-generating property caught up in a legal dispute and costing you money because you have a bad tenant or didn’t have a contract in place. On a lesser scale, you don’t want to waste time with your property sitting empty because you listed it in the wrong venue or have bad listing photos. Our clients come to us to help rent their property because we take care of the things they either don’t know how to do or don’t have time to do, like photographing and marketing the property, screening tenants, and conducting showings. If you’re looking to rent your Long Island property and need some professional help, get in touch with Jessica Sullivan Real Estate today.