Make the most out of your showings

*NOTE – This article was originally written in October of 2006 for the newsletter.

You’ve been trying to lease that apartment for weeks. You finally have an appointment for a showing. The prospect tenant shows up and says how much they love the apartment. Weeks later the apartment still hasn’t been rented and you are still losing money. What went wrong? Was the unit not right for the prospect? Maybe, but it might also have been you.

One of the hardest parts of being a landlord is getting tenants for your units. Even the highest quality units can sit vacant if they aren’t shown properly. The greatest marketing strategy in town can be wasted if you don’t close the deal. Here are a few tips on how you can make the most of your showings:

• Remember that you are selling the apartment. The apartment will not sell itself. When the tenant arrives, you shouldn’t simply open the door and let them walk around. You should walk with them, pointing out the great features of the apartment.

• When the prospect leaves, make sure they walk away with a rental application and a flyer displaying all the information they need to know about the apartment. Once they walk out the apartment door, they have already begun to forget some of the details of the apartment. The flyer will serve as a refresher and make the apartment stand out from the others they might have visited.

• When giving the tenant a rental application or talking about the application, avoid calling it a credit or background check. These terms tend to scare away even quality tenants. Simply call the form a rental application. If they ask what that encompasses, let them know that you screen all tenants to help ensure the safety of all your tenants. That tends to be reassuring.

• Follow the “smells good, looks good, feels good” rule. Try to get to your showings before the tenant arrives. If the unit has an odd or stale smell, put an air freshener in the unit. If the apartment is too hot or cold, turn on the AC or furnace. Turn on the lights beforehand. Make sure everything is presentable.

Keeping to these rules will help you to make the most out of your showings. That’s an important thing. After all, each day the unit goes unrented is money out of your pocket.