Pricing a rental may be one of the hardest tasks for a landlord who has not been up-to-date with the local rental market. As a property investor, this is one of the most important decisions to make. Improperly pricing your rental can cost you hundreds if not thousands in potential cash flow. In this blog, we will be looking at different ways you can optimally price your rental such as:
- Speaking to a Rental Expert
- Utilizing Zillow’s Rental Manager Tool
- Checking Rent-O-Meter’s Database
- Evaluating Current Market Listings
Now let’s dive in
Speaking to a Rental Expert To Price Your Rental
The first and easiest strategy to price your rental would be to speak to a well-versed Property Manager in your area. Property Managers, Like Eagle Property Management, list hundreds of rentals in the Greater Sacramento & Stockton Areas every year.
Property managers will be able to take a look at their property database and provide you with an accurate estimate that will limit vacancy & maximize cash flow. Specifically, Eagle Property Management uses proven analytical methods & data from various third-party companies to find the correct monthly rent amount to charge for your property.
If you are in the Sacramento area, feel free to give a call to (916) 299-9465 or fill out the contact form at the bottom of this page and I can help you strategically price your rental.
Utilizing Zillow’s Rental Manager Tool
Zillow’s Rental Manager tool is great way to get a price range of what your property could rent for. You simply enter your address on the Price My Rental tab and Zillow will return a list of properties that are similar to your rental & what they were listed for.
It is important to take into consideration that this range doesn’t take into consideration many amenities your rental may have. This only returns rentals with similar beds, baths, and square footage. There will also be information on parking, laundry & heating/cooling but these are not always 100% accurate.
Another downside to this method is it will only show Zillow listings. Although Zillow is the largest listing site, some rentals that were listed on other sites may not be shown.
Checking Rent-O-Meter’s Database
Rent-O-Meter.com has a paid PRO version which is similar to Zillow’s Rental Manager in the fact that you simply input your address and it can return comparable rentals & what they were listed for.
What’s great about this software is that you can adjust the proximity to get rentals that are within 3 miles of your rental for a majority of major listing websites. The downside of this program is that the free version will only return a general range for the area of your rental.
Rent-O-Meter used to be one of the best tools out but Zillow’s Rental Manager seems to offer very similar features for free.
Evaluating Current Market Listings
Checking current live listings in your specific neighborhood is a great way to confirm your rental price. This can be done using Zillow’s Rental Search or any other listing website’s rental search engine. Once you have searched for your neighborhood, Zillow will show all current live listings:
You can narrow your search by using the “Use Exact Match” feature for BD/BA specifications. Once this has been done take a look and see what rentals are similar to yours. Great ways to see if the price is getting a good response is to look at the amount of ‘Contacts’ and ‘Days Listed’. Having too many contacts compared to other rentals may mean that this was priced too low. Having not enough contacts or if it has been sitting on the market for a while it may mean that it was priced too high.
Our advice is to speak to property manager who will be able to use their hard data & experience to price your rental. If you are considering managing your property yourself we encourage you to check out our blog Should You Manage Your Sacramento Rental? To see if you are fully equipped for these responsibilities.
Request a Free Rental Evaluation
There are many additional responsibilities that come along with owning a rental property. Get in contact with one of our representatives today at (916) 714-0123 or send us a message by sending us a contact form below to learn more about how a reliable property manager can save you the time & headache required to manage a rental property.
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