I recently found myself on the other side of my business, as I searched for an apartment in San Francisco.
I decided I wanted to move back to San Francisco after almost ten years of Peninsula living. I rented out my house and took the plunge into apartment searching.
I decided to use this opportunity to gain some insight on how other leasing agents work and maybe steal some of their best practices. However, my experience was less than pleasant, which gave me some empathy for tenants, and assured me that the protocols and processes Lingsch Realty has developed over the last couple years make for a system that benefits both tenants and landlords.
THE SEARCH FROM A TENANT’S PROSPECTIVE
I always hear from tenants at apartment showings how difficult it is to find an apartment in the City. This is always interesting to me because it isn’t always easy for me to RENT apartments. Where is the disconnect? One would think that if it’s hard for tenants to rent apartments, it should be easy for me to put my vacancies out there and have them come running.
Through my search, I realized it wasn’t an apartment shortage that made renting difficult, but rather a lack of customer service. Most voicemails and emails I sent inquiring about properties went unanswered. In many cases, perhaps the apartments were already rented. But several times, I could not reach anyone to show the apartment, and would see the same ad being reposted week after week. It was very frustrating.
1) ACCESSIBILITY: My goal has always been to rent apartments 1) with the least out of pocket money for my clients to fix it up, 2) for the maximum rent the market will support, and 3) in the least amount of time.
While I can’t always control the first two goals, the third is generally a matter of making myself available. As much as possible, when I have a vacancy, I try to make myself available at a prospective tenant’s beck and call. You need to see the unit at 8 p.m.? No problem! You need to see it at 7 a.m.? No problem!
During my search, I found not all leasing agents hold this same belief.
One agent told me to go to the apartment and the door would be open. I never do this, as I want to meet all tenants. Spending time talking to potential tenants in person, and paying attention to their non-verbal cues, give you more insight as to the type of tenant they will be than their entire application and background check.
When I got to the apartment, I expected there to be a common area into which I needed to be buzzed. Not so much. The apartment was right off the street and the door was unlocked. Making this situation more disturbing was the large amount of construction going on across the street. If there were many prospective tenants going in and out of the apartment, it would be fairly obvious to the workers that the apartment was unlocked. Maybe one had a friend who needed a place to sleep for a couple days? It would be easy enough for them to arrive late at night and leave early in the morning and have nice, free accommodations.
This same agent told me he could meet me anytime but it would be have to be before 5 p.m. Most people have 9-to-5 jobs, and this would be impossible for them, especially if they didn’t work in the City.
What shocked me most was the amount of time people took to process applications and get back to me with an answer. I process applications quickly and try to get a deposit on the apartment as quickly as possible (generally 24 hours) in order to insure that the tenant does not back out or find another apartment.
One agent told me she didn’t know if an apartment would be available for another two more days as she was waiting on an application. And many times when I called about a vacant apartment, they said, they thought it was rented, but would get back to me in a couple days if it wasn’t. I thought, “If I like it, I can have a check in your hand to reserve it tonight!”
This is a huge disservice to clients, as these agents are wasting valuable marketing time and risk passing up a serious renter.
2) MARKETING:
Likewise, if a tenant can’t find your ad, you aren’t going to rent an apartment.
I ended up finding the apartment I ultimately rented by driving around a desirable neighborhood and looking for signs in apartment windows. One day I saw painters at a seemingly vacant apartment. I quickly tried to look up a rental listing with the address, positive I missed the ad because it was out of my search criteria (i.e. number of bedrooms, price, etc.).
I couldn’t find an ad anywhere, so I went back to the property and found the management company’s phone number. I called and asked for the information. It was just what I was looking for and had been on the market for a month so they had just lowered the price. I was shocked as I had been looking for about a month at this point and had never seen an ad for this property on any of the three rental sites I had been searching. Moreover, I had specifically looked for that apartment and couldn’t find it. Their inept marketing ended up as a win for me, as I feel I got a great deal on a wonderful apartment that would have had people lining up for miles to pay a much higher rent had it been marketed properly.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A PROSPECTIVE TENANT
Putting myself in a tenant’s shoes was most eye opening when I was simply perusing Craigslist and other listing sites for an apartment. I thought to myself: “OK, I am a tenant looking for an apartment. What in the way I search can I use for better ads when I’m on the leasing agent side?”
1) PHOTOS, PHOTOS, PHOTOS: I was surprised how many times, I, who is in the business, skipped over an ad because it didn’t have photos, or was frustrated because the photos did not show the finishes, size of the rooms or layout. Always put photographs in your ads that convey the finishes and layout of a property
2) Pricing: Unfortunately for landlords and leasing agents, San Francisco does not have a data clearinghouse showing what apartments actually rent for. Therefore we price units based on similar apartments’ rents and our own experiences of what price a particular apartment commands.
Therefore, tenants become the experts on pricing. They are the ones pounding the pavement every day comparing what you can get for which price. If you price an apartment high, don’t expect a tenant to jump on it. They know first-hand what else is available.
I always ask tenants at Open Houses “How does this compare to other apartments you have viewed?” and incorporate that feedback into my marketing and pricing.
3) Red Flags: Like everyone else, tenants want to feel like they are getting a good deal and aren’t being gouged. Therefore, if you do anything that wanders away from the norm, it may raise a reflag for tenants. It is common practice for owners of multiunit buildings without separate water meters to pay for water. So if you don’t, tenants may wonder where else you are trying to make money on them.
I looked at one property where the owner took the water bill and divided it between 30 (the total number of units) and billed each unit. This seemed pretty rational, albeit unusual, until you considered that the washing machines were also tied to the water meter. She was making money off those as well, without discounting the price per load to reflect that tenants were paying the entire water bill.
This particular landlord also wanted a $100 “appliance fee,” which you paid at the inception of your tenancy to cover the cost of appliances. While not unreasonable, it was, again, unusual, so I wondered what other fees they would try to squeeze out of me once I signed a lease, or what they would try to deduct from my security deposit once I moved out.
Even though you may want to make an extra buck, avoid schemes that raise a red flag for tenants. I met so many great tenants at open houses, as the difficulty in renting an apartment creates camaraderie among would-be competitors. You tend to run into the same people at different open houses if you have similar search criteria. I even ended up renting an apartment to a couple I met during my search.
This experience made me want to serve tenants better, and hopefully as a result better serve my clients. I learned accessibility is more important than anything, and learned to write better ads that will appeal to more tenants.
Stay tuned for next month’s installment, which will focus on what I saw that landlords could do better when trying to lease a vacant apartment.