Category Archives: Tips For Landlords

How To Competitively Set Your Rent Price

When setting the rates for your rental properties, you have to make sure your rent prices are set high enough so you can cover costs associated with being a landlord (like your mortgage, insurance, taxes (*sigh*), maintenance), but also be low enough to be competitive in the market.

Yeah, we know – that’s a lot easier said than done.

But as a College Pads customer, finding the sweet spot for rent prices is about to get a little easier with Rent Index. Check out how the Rent Index will help you stay competitive in your market!

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5 Tips For An Easy Rental Turnover

Generally speaking, turning over a rental property takes a landlord or property manager between 9 to 10 days. But with a little planning, you can easily streamline the turnover process and get it ready for the next round of tenants, saving you time and money.

Here are 5 easy tips for streamlining rental turnover:

Tip #1: Communicate With Tenants

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Things To Do To Speed Up Tenant Turnovers

What To Do Before, During, & After Tenant Turnover

If you were lucky, a majority of your tenants decided to renew their leases and stick around for another year. If you weren’t so lucky, the dreaded tenant turnover process is right around the corner. While the anxiety of getting one group of tenants out, and another group in may be keeping you up at night, there are definitely things you can do to make the process easier on yourself.

Here are a few things you should make sure you’re doing before, during, and after tenant turnover:

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We’ll Tell You What Your Tenants Want, What They Really, Really Want.

Whether you own a condominium, duplex, single-family home, or a huge purpose-built apartment complex, all landlords share the same goal: to keep your units full and maximize profits. But finding the right mix of cost minimization while increasing resale value and growing rents isn’t easy. One of the more obvious ways to achieve this goal is to make a few rental property updates. 

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Why Pictures Of Your Listings Are So Important

When you think about it, getting a prospective student tenant’s attention comes down to just a few seconds. Today’s world is a quite hectic one, and in the world of smartphones and the internet, students are scrolling and sifting through rental listings in just a matter of moments. Just as quickly as someone can stumble upon your listing, they can stop looking at an even quicker pace. When students have the power to search through hundreds of listings with the swipe of one finger, it’s important to make a good first impression. As the old adage goes, pictures really do say a thousand words, and whether or not you realize it, including quality photos of your rental property can really make or break your odds of leasing it out. 

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Student’s Choice: Top 10 Rated Student Housing Companies

Off-campus student housing isn’t quite like it used to be, and these top ten companies on our list are prime examples of how this growing industry is taking off-campus student living to a whole new level. Hundreds of luxurious off-campus student oases have been popping up at college campuses nationwide over the years. These extravagant student abodes often draw in their residents with impressive amenities, like high-end furnished apartments with utilities, rooftop resort-style pools, cyber study lounges equipped with Macbooks, indoor and outdoor sports courts, movie theaters, and beyond! 

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How Off-Campus Housing Is Changing During The Coronavirus Pandemic

Students are scrambling to find off-campus housing for next semester, more than what you’d usually expect to see over summer break. That’s not because they’ve put off finding housing until the very last minute, but because colleges across the United States have slowly started to announce their plans to reopen campus for the fall semester following the COVID-19 pandemic. 

While there are still a ton of universities holding off on officially announcing whether classes will be held on-campus or online next semester until mid-July, it’s safe to assume that most college campuses’ plans to reopen will include adjustments to how many students can attend in-person classes at once and other plans to limit large groups. While the possibility of getting out of their on-campus living requirement may be a welcome change for some students, it will also mean that landlords should be ready for a possible flood of inquiries from potential student renters. 

To get a better feel for what that’s like, we spoke with the Chief Operating Officer of DABCO Property Management near Washington State University to figure out exactly what this pandemic has and will mean for them. 

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COVID-19’s Impact On Property Management at College Campuses

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last few months, you know that literally everything about our day to day life has changed. We are socially distancing ourselves from family and friends, wearing face masks when we need to venture outside, working remotely at home offices, and waiting on daily updates about what the new few months of our lives are going to look like. It’s boring, but it’s what we need to do.

Even though some places are slowly opening businesses back up, it won’t be business as usual. Not for a while anyway, and the off-campus housing market is no different. With some schools announcing they intend to have on-campus classes in the fall and others still holding off, it’s a tumultuous time for property managers.

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Landlord Spotlight: Aspen Springfield

Every action an apartment takes with a current resident or prospective renter has meaning to it. They all say something about the apartment and ultimately define the apartment. It’s hard to control how every property manager, leasing agent and community manager communicate, but there is one easy way to make sure that your student-focused apartment is communicating the right message to tenants and potential future tenants alike: social media. Continue reading

The 5 Most Popular Search Filters To Student Renters

Ever wonder what goes into a student’s decision when they’re looking for a place to live? If you answered yes, you’re thinking about the right things when it comes to finding new student tenants. If you answered no … what’s the deal? These are the occupants that keep your units full – you should be taking what they want into consideration.

Being a leader in this industry doesn’t happen by overlooking the small details. Knowing what filters students are clicking on might seem like a small detail, but understanding these patterns is really understanding the things that matter most to the students who are in the comparison stage of looking for a place to live. Knowing how students function here will help you improve your listing and how you navigate converting your leads to leases.

So what was popular? Pools? Tanning beds? Coffee bars? Nah. Students keep it much more simple than you’d think.

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