4 Tips to Craft the Right Listing—and Lease Your Allen Rental Properties Faster!

Your property listing is like the online resume for your rental property: tenants decide if they want to "interview" your Allen rental properties largely based on—these days—online listings. If you're not getting calls about your rental home—especially in the booming DFW area—then your listing is probably to blame.

How can you fix a lame-duck listing? Hiring an expert property manager in Allen is one way to kick your listings into high gear.

However, if you happen to be an aspiring writer and photographer in addition to being a real estate guru, then you can always DIY using some handy tips from the pros here at RentHub.

With a little "elbow grease" and the right advice, you'll be well on your way to crafting a professional, eye-catching listing in no time!

First Things First: Start With Quality Photos

If the digital explosion has done anything, it's placed emphasis on how visually driven people can be. We've touched on this before in other posts, but it's so essential to your listing that it's worth mentioning again: the first part of your listing that a user is going to look at is the photos.

While glancing through whatever pictures you've chosen to represent the cream of your property crop, a tenant will decide whether or not they are interested and want more information on your Allen rental properties within roughly the first 30 seconds of looking at your photos. This makes getting your chosen images "right" the first component of any successful listing.


If you don't want your properties to end up as part of a cringe-worthy collection of bad listing photos, there are a few crucial tips to keep in mind:

• Ensure the property is as clean as it would be during your first in-person showing. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a cluttered shot is worth a thousand useless words. Don't let this be you!
  
• Use bright, natural light where you can—open up those shades and shutters! When you can't, bring in lighting support and turn on lights across your rental properties.
• If you have access to one, a professional camera with a wide-angle lens and a tripod can yield some fantastic shots in capable hands. If photography isn't your forte, you can always bring in a professional to produce beautiful shots for less than you might be expecting.
• Watermark your photos: one of the biggest scams surrounding real estate is the theft of your photos and listing. The con artist will then convince the tenant that they have "other applications" they are ready to approve—but they could hold it for a fee. In some cases, landlords have gone to the property to find a family moved in, and then heartbreakingly had to displace them. Take it from a property manager in Allen: you don't want to have to go through the stress of any form of eviction alone.

Use a 3D Property Tour

Very few single-family rental properties are listed with the 3D-tour treatment—which is why we proudly offer this technology at RentHub.


Modern tenants love having that extra step to let users get a feel for the spaces they're interested in. Not only is this a great way to get a call about your Allen rental properties, it really helps tenants to "see" themselves in the space. A 3D property tour will also help you weed out tenants that decide they're not interested after having a good "look" around, saving you the time it would take to show your property to tenants in person.

Start Writing!

That's right: even in the digital age, the written listing component still has its place!

If a potential tenant is interested, they will move on to the written portion of your listing to find further facts. You should try to write the "story" of your Allen rental properties in an interesting but informational manner.


Remember, your prospect already looked at the photos—so they'll probably be able to tell if you're embellishing.

• Start with updates and upgrades that make for new and interesting features. Think about this: why should they choose this listing over the others? Keep the answer in mind when working out how you want to approach your potential tenants through text.
• Next, list the function features: beds, baths, and square footage. Talk about the kitchen and any other spaces that will help your potential tenants recreate their favorite episode of "Binging with Babish." If you're not trying to target millennials, in particular, cater to the tenants you're aiming for.
• Write your listings in a way that covers nearby schools, the neighborhood, and cultural points of interest. Know a great place to get Pakistani food in Allen? What about shopping hot spots? Being aware of the perks that surround each of your Allen properties can be a key selling point that makes them stand out.
• Spell check your listing! Use a free service like Grammarly to ensure you didn't miss anything important: a spelling error can make your listing look unprofessional.

Hire an Expert Property Manager in Allen

With all of the scams out there these days surrounding rental properties, listing your investments through a property management company makes sense—and gives savvy tenants peace of mind from a name they can trust. A reputable property management company will have a brick-and-mortar office, a fully functional website, and will advertise their compliance with the TREC. It's tough for investors to offer any of these perks to potential tenants on their own—especially when you're an out-of-state investor!

If you're just not feeling like you need professional property management at this stage in the growth of your real estate portfolio, there's usually some "a la carte" services available to investors. Many property management companies offer "Tenant Placement Only" services for landlords and investors who prefer managing the rental themselves—but dislike the process of finding and vetting tenants.

For those out there who love the thrill of being a DIY landlord, we have FREE resources you can count on to make managing your properties even easier! Want to get started? After you finish your perfect listing, it's time to get your rental properties ready with the RentHub Make Ready Checklist! Let us help you prep your properties with tips from the property management pros!

Download The Checklist