So, how can you figure out the monthly rent you should charge for your vacant single, duplex, triplex or apartment building? Like most property management decisions, it’s really part ‘art’ and also part ‘science.’ You will almost always find rents are in a particular range in a given area. This range may be tight ($50 or so) or may be quite variable ($250 or more). This is where the last post How Much Rent Should I Charge? (Part 1) comes into play. Depending on your management approach, you will either be at the lower, upper or center of that range.

But, how do you know what the rage actually is? There are at least four free ways to help you find what other landlords in your area are charging for vacant and occupied units that might be similar to yours. These four methods that I list below are the ones I use most often. Of course there are others, and I’d be interested to know if anyone has some favorites that they would like to share, too. Read through these tips. Don’t worry about having to go back and forth clicking individual links to these sites. I have put them all in one handy place. When you want to check them out just click on–

Here are four common tools I use in local rent comparisons:

1. Local papers (most of the time without even having to buy them!): You can look at your local or regional newspaper and search for rentals close to the one that you are trying to rent. Sometimes, there are even three or more that cover a particular town. So, how do you search through all of these classifieds? Well, the great news is that there are sites out there that do a great job providing online links to your most of the local papers you might want to check out. onlinenewspapers.com, newspapers.com and thelocalpapers.com are examples of three sites that provide direct links to local papers with an online presence.
2. Rental listing sites: You can search rentals in Realtor.com, Tenant.com, Apartments.com and many others to get a good feel for what landlords are asking for their vacant units. One of the nice things about these sites is they will often have more detail than local papers with regard to the specific size of the unit, amenities, etc. and may also have pictures of the property interior and exterior. Knowledge is power, and the more quality information you have, the more accurate you rental price comparison will be. I’m willing to bet many of your prospective tenants are doing something pretty similar in their quest for a suitable rental unit.
3. Rentometer.com: This is a great site that gives you both a rental range and direct comparison of local rentals. Go to this site and enter in the address of your property, the rent you are thinking of charging, the number of bedrooms and how many units are in the building. Rentometer.com then shows you a “meter” and a map, giving you the range of rents in that area according to their database (high, low and where your rent falls within that range), and also a map showing you where all of those properties are located compared to yours. You can click on the “property flags” on the map and details about that particular property will pop up. It looks like they also have other free and pay services at their iiproperty.com site which we won’t cover in this particular blog.
4. HUD USER (US Dept. of Housing & Urban Development): Whether or not you have any government subsidized tenants, HUD does a pretty thorough review each year of rents and related data throughout the country. Each year they publish their Fair Market Rents data, which provide guidelines for landlords who rent to Section 8 and other subsidized tenants. I would definitely look here as part of your research in figuring how much rent you might charge. The database is very easy to navigate, and if you do take subsidized tenants or are considering it, the HUD site has a lot of other useful information about these programs and how they work for landlords.

These sites should generally provide you with enough information to help figure out the initial price you should be charging for your rental unit and help you fill your vacancy quickly and for a nice profit. Going through this exercise can also tell you if your current tenants are due for an adjustment that might be higher than the nominal one that many landlords do from year to year, if at all (but should do)! It also is good to know so that you can negotiate with current tenants as they request improvement to their buildings and individual units.

At the Research Local Rents tab on ManageRentalProperty.com, I have provided links to the various online paper sites, rental listing sites and HUD Fair Market Rent Data.

Best of luck…

Regards,

Steven Boorstein

http://www.howtobuyrentalproperty.com/

https://www.managerentalproperty.com/