Understanding The Single-Family Rental Market

Location is vital to your ability to rent out your home and have a profitable rental venture. Simply put, depending on your homes location, it could mean the difference between having a high demand from prospective tenants or almost no demand because there aren’t any people willing to travel to your place’s side of town. You really need to choose the location first and the property second.

Rental Demand is another major factor you are going to have to take into account. You need to keep an eye on the current market trends to see if the marketplace is in demand for your rental or not. For example, my family owns a home in a desert location in the United States. This city is visited every year by individuals from the north as well as Canada. They come down during their winter season as it is much warmer here than it is back where they are from. Because of this influx of people, during these prime months of the year, the rental rates for short-term housing goes up by about 30%.

Preparing Your Rental

Comb through your rental. You need to make an exhaustive list of all the possible repairs your rental could need. Some major items to check before listing include:

  • Roof
  • HVAC Systems
  • Appliances
  • Interior Paint
  • Windows and Door Quality
  • Flooring Quality
  • Potential Pest Control Problems
  • Sinks and Toilettes

There is something i would like to drill home to you as someone who has family members who own rentals and as an individual myself who manages one. Never, ever, underestimate a tenant’s ability to break your stuff. Ask anyone who has ever dealt/worked in an industry that is involved with renting an asset/good, people break things all the time. Before you rent out your property, you need to make sure your home is up to par and will be able to hold up to the coming stresses of a tenant.

The items I listed above are just the most common things that end up breaking or requiring your attention. Realistically, every rental is going to be slightly different from the next. A home in a wet and rainy area will have issues that a home built in the desert simply won’t really have to deal with. Before listing your place, take the items I listed above into account and make sure they are up to a decent standard.

Best Marketing Strategies

Marketing your property is one of the most crucial steps to being a landlord and renting out your home. If you can’t manage to get eyeballs looking at your listing and no one is aware that your property exists and that it’s for rent, you might as well not even own it in the first place. There are a couple of strategies/ways to market your home for rent that are tried and true.

First, there’s the main way people go about listing their rental, they contact a Real Estate Agent or Broker. These individuals specialize in the local real estate market and will have a good grasp on getting things done. The benefit of using an agent/broker is that they handle most of the major aspects of acquiring a tenant all by themselves. These things are usually but are not limited to:

  • Market compliance
  • Tenant Screening
  • Marketing and Exposure
  • Peace of Mind and Time-Saving

Using a real estate agent also allows access to the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) which is a central listing database for real estate brokers/agents share and get ahold of listings. Generally speaking is from my understanding it’s also widely used for the reliability of its information and the speed with which it updates.

NAR.Realtor describes the “MLS” as:

An MLS is a private offer of cooperation and compensation by listing brokers to other real estate brokers. Brokers share information on properties they have listed and invite other brokers to cooperate in their sale in exchange for compensation if they produce the buyer. Sellers benefit by increased exposure to their property. Buyers benefit because they can obtain information about all MLS-listed properties while working with only one broker.

Tenant Screening

There are a couple of steps you must take when screening possible tenants for your rental property. Generally speaking, i like to stick with the following:

  • Income verification
  • Credit Check
  • Your personal Criteria (e.g. no dogs etc.)
  • Crimminal Background Check
  • Checking their References

Personally, these items listed above should be a must for any landlord that is going to be listing their real estate out to ANYONE. It truly is better to be safe than sorry. Generally speaking though, i would say that 90% of the people that read my blog are small-time landlords. This means (generally) that you will most likely be hiring a property manager or real estate professional to be taking care of this for you. In fact, if you are hiring a real Estate professional, this is honestly a perfect question to ask them during your process of going over the details of the contract. Touch on how exactly they are going to screen prospective tenants for your rental. Make sure to make your personal demands known and see to it that they are communicated effectively.

Rent Collection/Management

There are a few main ways that landlords receive their income from tenants. Generally, landlords renting single-family homes will either receive their income via direct deposit, or by physical check. When you deal with a property management firm, the standard practice for these companies is to use a software called

Resources For Landlords

Here are some links for you to check out. I personally follow all of the channels below and love all of the content they put out. I think the broader you can expand your personal horizons and check out different types of content from different creators. Generally, I think that people who have been in the game and know how it works are great resources, however, no single person or entity has all of the answers. Checking out the few below will give you a solid foundation of knowledge to start your real estate investing journey.