Why Won’t My Denver Rental House Rent?

Today we’re talking about what to do if your Denver rental property will not rent. Why is my house not renting?

The first thing that you need to think about is your listing. What does your listing look like? The number one most important thing you can do is to get some professional photos of your rental. You probably should not try to do that yourself; we recommend hiring a company that does Real Estate photography like, for instance, Virtuance. Virtuance will take up to 10 photos of your rental property for $99. That’s a great deal and it will pay for itself 10 times over, so absolutely call Virtuance or a company like that.

Second, where are you listing it? If you’re just listing on Facebook or listing on Craigslist it’s not going to rent or it’s going to take a really long time to rent. You need to list on all the most widely used rental sites, so it’s going to take you some time if you’re doing it by yourself. First, list on Zillow which publishes the Zillow, Trulia, and Hot Pads. You also need to list on apartments.com if this is a multi-family property. Go ahead and do a Google search for the most widely used rental sites and then take the time to list on each of those sites.

The second most important factor is price. People think you can name your price for a rental property in Denver because there’s so much demand; that is wrong. Denver has a lot of demand and also has a lot of supply so you have to compete. You have to have a competitive price to get your property leased so what should you do?

Take a look at comparable rentals in your area and price reasonably. Just because you have an emotional attachment to your property and you think it has some cool things going on, you need to be reasonable. Be objective about what people will actually pay and then every five days you need to lower that price if you have not gotten strong leads that look like they’re going to rent.

There’s so much demand that you shouldn’t leave that property at the wrong price for over five days. Since people think in terms of hundreds drop that price $100 every 5 days, and your goal is to have the property leased in 2 weeks. If you’ve been listed 30 days your price is wrong.

The third factor to consider is about restrictions. Are you not allowing pets? Are renters not allowed to use the garage or are they not allowed the basement? People don’t like those restrictions.

We recommend since about 60% of renters in Denver have a dog, and a higher percentage have some kind of pet, you probably need to think about allowing pets. You can collect a little bit more rent and you can collect a little bit higher to deposit to protect yourself, so think about pets.

Don’t restrict using a certain bedroom or a storage area in the basement because you want to keep it for yourself. Let them have that whole property. Don’t restrict too much.

And then the 4th and final factor is about amenities. Does your property not have a garage? Does it not have parking? Does it not have central AC? Maybe you don’t have any window treatments like blinds, or maybe you don’t have a washer and dryer.

You need to think about those things because your competition is providing those things. Get some blinds up, and provide a washer and dryer. People expect that in the Denver rental market.

If you don’t have parking need to factor that into your price because parking is on the top of the list of amenities that renters in Denver want, and the one right below that is A/C. So think about that maybe if I don’t have AC can I provide window units in my property? And if not, you need to reflect that into your price.

If you have any questions or want to talk about how to make your rental property perform better please reach out to me: tyler@wholepm.com or my direct line is 720-735-0513.