Marketing Strategy to Find Qualified Applicants FAST!

We took over a property last September at 90% delinquency. We've been evicting bad tenants and non-payers faster that we are moving them in. We only have 32 units, all 2 and 3 bedrooms apartments.

We use Appfolio and they have great online marketing outreach. I also use Craigslist and Postlets, where we get a lot of prospects from.

In the past 3 weeks, we have denied 9 prospects and approved 3. The denied applicants were all pretty much the same:

1. Owed a previous landlord (we're not even considering any evictions in the past 2 years).

2. Credit was well below 50% good that we set as a minimum, without counting medical bills.

We're getting the traffic, just not qualified.

Any suggestions on our marketing campaign?

Thanks!

When I start getting too much unqualified traffic I paste my criteria directly into the ad. I went from two dozen calls a day to about six.


PS- love the new pic!

Sandy,

How about offering a referral incentive to the current residents (the good ones), and new ones moving in? They'll be happy to get a nice referral credit on their rent, and they get to pick their new neighbors! Maybe give them a $100 credit when the applicant they referred to you signs a lease?

I've used this method before in lease up situations, which is similar to your situation. It usually generates a lot of activity. You can include the qualification criteria when you publicize the referral program, and that should reduce the number of unqualified applicants.

Another strategy is to increase the application fee. If people think the don't have much to lose, they'll file the app hoping they qualify, but knowing they probably won't.

If you're afraid a higher app fee will prevent some of the good applicants from applying, still charge the higher fee but then credit some of it back on their first month's rent.

Matt

Great ideas Matt! It's been so long since we've offered referral bonus' that I forgot all about it.
In Oregon, we have to offer "similar" application fees across the board for all rentals by law, so we can't get away with increasing it more than five or ten bucks, but I bet it works.

Owner's won't pay referral fees, but are giving 1/2 off rent for 4 units. I started putting the criteria in our ads, but we have a website that posts everywhere. We're getting inquiries from old ads where the price is about $75 less than the current price.

We're doing our best to get people to e-mail us, but they e-mail and say "call me" I have questions. Why can't they ask them in an e-mail?

Crazy!!! We had 22 phone calls yesterday and about 15 e-mails. One application and they were a walk-in that didn't call or e-mail.

Thanks for the input!!!

Hmmm... that's an interesting strategy, offering 1/2 off of rent.

My opinion - not that anyone asked - is that the owners are not allocating their money with a strategy that will help. I believe deep discounts on move-in costs (1/2 off rent) will not increase the quality of your applicants, but rather it will attract more of the unqualified ones. It will have the greatest appeal to the ones who have trouble managing their cashflow.

But it will definitely cause an uptick in your inbox, and in phone calls!

Matt