Owning a rental property is a great way to produce steady income over a long period of time, but it can be difficult figuring out where to price your rental property to keep reliable tenants while maximizing revenue. In order to get and keep your landlord career headed in the right direction, let’s look at some ways to assist you in knowing how much rent to charge in Cold Spring.
Bring in a Professional
Before getting too deep into the numbers, it’s a good idea to start off by determining if you feel it would be worth it to employ the expertise of a real estate agent.
An agent’s local market knowledge is invaluable and could result in more effective marketing, which leads to more applicants to choose from. Keep in mind that it’s common for an agent to make a commission of one or two months’ rent once the transaction is closed, but this can always be negotiable if the agent is willing to be flexible.
The key to getting your money’s worth out of an agent is shopping around and finding the right one that will work for you. Meet face-to-face with multiple agents, fill them in on all of the details regarding the property, and pay attention to any questions, concerns, and attitudes they present throughout the meeting.
If you choose to go it alone, there are plenty of avenues that will lead you to knowing how much rent to charge without the help of an agent.
Carefully Consider Your Value
Just like selling a home, pricing your rent appropriately from the get-go is important to make sure you don’t find yourself waiting months to get a worthwhile tenant.
The key to finding that butter zone for your rent is to establish what is known in the real estate world as the market value of a property. The market value is the estimated price that someone would be willing to pay to purchase the property in its entirety.
You can come to this value by looking at the closing prices of other surrounding and similar properties over the last few years. This data point is called your neighborhood comparables, or neighborhood comps.
Other points to keep in mind when searching for your market value are proximity to popular shopping and entertainment venues, schools, parks, emergency services, mass transit stops, and primary commuter routes.
If you feel left not having any clue where to start once you have collected this data, it might be worthwhile to hire an appraiser to come to do a thorough appraisal of the property. It’s very important to remember that appraised value is not market value, but an appraised value can at least aid you with a bare-bones idea of your property’s value.
Monitor and Adapt to Interest
Once you have landed on a beginning rent price, either put your own or your agent’s marketing prowess to good use through your typical methods.
We highly recommend leveraging free and cheap online resources, such as Zillow and Facebook, to get the word out and generate interest quickly and easily. As your ads start to hit potential tenants’ screens, you’ll begin to get returned data suggesting if your ads are grabbing these individual’s attention or not, and you can edit to swing those metrics more in your direction.
A couple of the best ways to make a rental property listing more appealing to potential renters are to either spruce up the listing with a more complete photo set and text blurb and to look at lowering your rent.
There are few things that will help that listing do the talking for you than making your asking rent even more competitive.
Help Knowing How Much Rent to Charge in Cold Spring
Knowing how much rent to charge when starting out with a new rental property can be easier when you contact our team at (914) 407-3322 for guidance!