Property not renting? Use the VSAP method

Filling up vacancies is one of the things that beginner real estate investors find extremely challenging. A high vacancy rate can be a major blow to the Net Operation Income (NOI). A poor NOI will have a negative impact on almost every aspect of your investment goals. It will not only reduce the cash flow, but also decrease the property’s market value.

If you are having a hard time renting your property, I would recommend that you use my tried-and-tested ‘VSAP’ method. The acronym stands for Views, Showings, Applications and Pool.

Here are a few tips you will find useful in implementing the ‘VSAP’ method:

• Listing improvement: Most tenants start their search for a rental online. Since the property listing websites are inundated with rental listings, you need to grab tenants’ attention with better photos and descriptions. Write a description that addresses the pain points of your target tenants. For example, if you are listing smaller units, you can highlight how they make the optimized use of the space or how they offer enough storage space. If your property is targeting students, you need to highlight features that specifically appeal to them. This will increase the VIEWS on your listings.
• Convenient showings: The next step is to make sure that you make it easier for your tenants to schedule a showing and view the property. Are there a lot of steps before showing? are you showing often enough? Is your audience older and you’re expecting them to use tech? Is your audience a church going group and you’re only showing on Sunday? - you will need iterations to figure this out! This will make SHOWINGS more convenient and hassle-free for prospective renters.
• Appropriate rent: Drop the rent - do this often by $10 to get your listing to show up as fresh again and closely monitor the VSAP conversions. When things suddenly pick up - that’s your appropriate rent. This will also improve VIEWS on your listings.
• Responsiveness: Responding to any feedback and questions and process rental applications quickly is extremely important. Keep in mind that people usually view multiple properties. Your responsiveness can make you stand out from your competitors. You can sell an OK product by combining it with top notch service.
• Feedback: Feedback from potential tenants is GOLD. Get on the phone with the people who saw it but didn’t apply or your agent might have done this if they’re good. You’ll know why you aren’t getting enough applications. This will help you come up with ways to improve conversion rate and get more APPLICATIONS.
• Managing expectations: the tenant pool you’re getting is what it is. You’ll need to choose from that. It doesn’t mean that you skip the due diligence in tenant screening, but don’t over-analyze this. Being a bit flexible and doing your due diligence is fine balance that you will need to find. This will take care of ‘POOL’ component of the ‘VSAP’ formula.

Did you try these? Let me know how they worked out.