Advertising your Investment Property Using Craig’s List

Advertising your investment property using Craig’s List is something you should seriously consider.

Craig’s List is an excellent place to advertise your investment property vacancies. I wrote a post about doing Reverse Prospecting for Tenants on Craig’s List about 6 months ago. Although this is a very effective way to find new tenants, you should plan to post your apartment for rent. Here are a couple of tips to get your best response:

• Include your phone number as some prospects will want to call.
• Make sure to check the email address that you set up in Craig’s list often, especially in the first 24 hours. I have had emails from prospective tenants within minutes of posting.
• Always post pictures of the property. Many tenants will not even consider your apartment or contact you without pictures. The pictures can be from a few years ago, just insure they show the property well.
• Craig’s list does allow some HTML in their postings. Check with your friendly web designer, but you can do bold and change the color of text.
• I always put the available date in the heading to allow readers to quickly see it. Such as: “Avail-June 1”
• Highlight anything unique about the property (pool, freshly updated, hardwood floors) in the title also.
• If you are a licensed Minnesota real estate agent, remember that you are required to disclose that fact on everything you publish (this included).
• Take a trick from retailers, drop the rent just below the $00 mark, such as $999 or $1099 or $599, instead of $1000, $1100, or $600 respectively.

With just a few changes to your ads, you will find you will generate many more calls and have your properties leased faster.