Get Ready for Thursday Tour (Thursday??)

You Read it Here First

In the course of helping clients find a rental property the last 2 weeks, it's become abundantly clear that the rental market is much more fragmented and chaotic than the For Sale market.

And pricing is much sloppier (what you get for, say, $2,500/mth runs the gamut from properties worth high $300k's to low $600k's).

While Craig's List seems to dominate, there are another 6-8 sites that have rental properties that aren't listed elsewhere.

And coming this week, rental properties will now be on MLS.

Step 2

Once you've defined the appropriate universe of rental candidates for your client, step #2 is to go look at them.

Some owners and rental brokers are quite responsive, and showings are easy to set up.

However, others take repeated efforts to reach, and have very little time available for showings ("How about after work next Monday?").

For Realtors generally accustomed to getting access during business hours, with a few hours notice, that doesn't cut it.

Proposal: Rental Tour

Once upon at time, For Sale properties suffered from a similar lack of exposure.

At least in the Twin Cities, the solution was to hold open houses every Tuesday, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., when Realtors can see all the new inventory.

Here's betting $100 that there'll be something similar for rental properties within the next year (at least ones whose rent justifies the marketing effort).

P.S.: my proposed time is 1 to 3 p.m Thursdays.