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 All the Perks of Home Staging Without the Heavy Lifting
Now, there’s virtual staging, digitally enhancing the property photos rather than actually placing the furnishings in the unit. Click a button to add artwork, a dining table, and viola, traffic increases as prospects clamour to move into the unit. Virtual staging offers all of the benefits of home staging, but without the need for actual furnishings. No money spent on rented furnishings, no time lost, and fewer trips to the chiropractor.  Knowing what tenants are seeking in a rental propery offers landlords clues in deciding how their spruce-up dollars are best spent, and how to effectively advertise properties to attract the best applicants.HomeRun Homes (www.Lease2Buy.com), a rent-to-own classifieds powerhouse, collects data from thousands of renters who are looking for long-term rentals, and follows trends to determine what tenants are looking for.
Here are the ten top amenities that qualified, long-term tenants were seeking over the past 60 days, in order of importance:
by Charles Brown
You have a novel idea – Hey! Maybe some creative advertising would help! You create a stunning brochure with pictures from your holiday party with everyone having a good time and a guy dressed like the Easter Bunny in the background. You put up some billboards with pictures of your smiling staff members posing around the swimming pool.  New Yorkers have passed a law banning apartment rentals of less than 30 days. The ban is aimed at short-term tourist rentals, as well as “transient” hotels in permanent residential buildings.
by Howard Bell
 If you own to rent, know why renters move and what amenities they choose in their new digs. If we can isolate the major needs of tenants we can begin of offer those amenities ourselves and we can punch up our new listings advertising by highlighting those amenities for ourselves. (more…)
Is Specialized Housing For You?
by Michael Monteiro
Particularly if you own a property in an urban area or near a university or
 center of business, many specialized tenant markets are just waiting to be captured. Specialized property management may be just the solution you’ve been looking for to decrease vacancies and guarantee steady rental income.
When considering just a few of your options below, be sure that you take your property, location, property management style, and goals into consideration.
Section 8 and low-income housing Essentially, the Section 8 program provides low-income individuals with government-assisted rent. Generally, tenants pay approximately 30 percent of a unit’s rent and the government pays the remaining balance directly to the tenant’s landlord.
In such a scenario, the Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) will determine the unit’s fair market rate (FMR) and the landlord is not allowed to charge the tenant anything over this amount. While it is up to you to choose whether or not to participate in Section 8, keep the following points in mind:
You will be subject to property inspection to ensure you meet HUD’s Housing Quality Standards.
You will not be able to charge a Section 8 tenant more than FMR.
Regardless of your state’s laws, you cannot evict a Section 8 tenant without judicial action for eviction.
But it’s important to bear in mind that these tax credits apply only if you adhere to the rules and regulations that determine who can live in your building and how much they can be charged. Not abiding by the rules that are set forth can result in a whole lot of headaches, not to mention economic loss.
Despite the red tape that can come with low-income housing property management, there is a large pool of renters in need of low-income housing. If your property is in an appropriate situation, low-income property management may be a good solution for you.
Student housing College students can be a landlord’s best friend or worst enemy. The problems with renting to students are fairly straightforward. Generally speaking, you’re dealing with younger renters (many of whom may be living on their own for the first time).
With this in mind, you may be more likely to experience noise and upkeep issues. Because of the school schedule, you may also find yourself turning apartments over annually or having to deal with sub-lets during the summer months.
But there are some very real positives when it comes to renting to students as well, most of which are financial. If you are living in an area that houses a college or university, chances are you will have a more dense renting population than you would otherwise. This means that—for at least nine months out of the year—students offer a very real way to keep your vacancy levels low. Also, while students may not inherently have a lot of income (or any at all), when a parent or guardian co-signs the lease, in most cases that monthly check is just as reliable as it would be under any other circumstances.
Sure, you may have to be a bit more hands-on than you would otherwise be when it comes to running student housing. But the bottom line is, they offer a nice steady flow of income. Corporate housing More likely than not, managing corporate housing is fairly different from any other kind of property management you’ve done to date. First of all, you’ll be dealing with a company rather than an individual tenant.
In most corporate housing situations, a company will rent out one or more rooms in a property, with the understanding that one or more of their employees or
 clients will occupy this space over the duration of the rental term. The way this actually works out may vary from having one stable tenant for a year at a time to having a cast of different tenants in and out on as little as a daily or weekly basis.
The good news here is that signing a lease with a corporate entity allows property managers to feel relatively secure that payment issues will be avoided. There are not necessarily downsides to this scenario, just things to consider that make this situation different from renting to an individual such as: assuming the responsibility for furnishing the unit; the potential inability to build a relationship with the tenant or screen for undesirable tenant behavior; and, in some cases, the knowledge that you will not necessarily have a tenant occupying the unit at all times to immediately alert you when repair and upkeep issues crop up.
If you are looking for ways to decrease vacancy rates and generate more income, remember: There are always ways to think outside of the box when it comes to property management. Before you undertake one of these (or any other) specialized property management endeavors, just make sure you have carefully thought out the pros and cons and are well versed on any specific tax considerations or rules and regulations that may apply. Check out the Buildium Blog for more property management resources. Michael Monteiro works for Buildium LLC, maker of online property management software and landlord software for professional property managers, condos and homeowner associations (HOAs) and is author of the The Buildium Property Management Blog. See The Right Way to Handle Subletting. American Apartment Owners Association offers discounts on products and services for landlords related to your real estate investment including REAL ESTATE FORMS, tenant debt collection, tenant background checks, insurance and financing. Find out more at joinaaoa. To subscribe to our blog, click here.
Put Your Rental Listing in the Palm of Their Hands
 Apartment listing website MyNewPlace just announced that it has launched MyNewPlace for Mobile, a version of its website for mobile devices, allowing renters to search and review apartments and rental homes wherever they have a wireless connection. Users no longer have to be in front of their computer at home or work in order to search for their next apartment.
According to comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, over 63 million Americans use a mobile device to access the Internet for news and information. Based on internal and third-party research, MyNewPlace estimates that well over 10 million renters are active mobile Internet users.
MyNewPlace for Mobile has all of the features consumers need to find their next apartment, including:
“Up until now searching for an apartment meant being stuck in front of the computer,” said Mark Moran VP of Marketing at MyNewPlace, “Now with MyNewPlace for Mobile, consumers have all of the information they need to find a new apartment right in the palm of their hand.”
MyNewPlace features more than 6 million apartments for rent in the United States. Mobile users will be able to use rich apartment search filtering, including search by city, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, price, and even pet-friendliness. Additionally, MyNewPlace for Mobile will remember which properties a user has looked at, “MyNewPlace for Mobile takes the best of our award-winning website and lets users take it where they need it out on the road with them as they go apartment hunting,” Moran added.
MyNewPlace.com is the third largest apartment Internet Listing Service and is used by millions of people. The launch of MyNewPlace for Mobile is consistent with the company’s commitment to embracing new technologies and channels, as also evidenced by its recent integrations with FaceBook and Twitter.
The mobile version of MyNewPlace can be found at http://m.MyNewPlace.com.
Share your insights by commenting below. For questions about our blog, contact our editor at kim@joinaaoa.org.
American Apartment Owners Association offers discounts for landlords on products and services related to your rental investment, including real estate forms, tenant debt collection, tenant background checks, insurance and financing. Find out more at www.joinaaoa.org. To subscribe to our blog, click here. Employer Willing to Buy Out Tenant’s Lease by Robert Griswold, Inman News
I don’t want to be difficult, but I hate to lose a good tenant when I spent so much money upgrading the rental unit and marketing the property. She has now come back to me with the proposal that the employer will pay me a “reasonable” amount to break the lease. I don’t have any idea on what is an appropriate charge. Am I limited to a certain amount? What if I ask for three months’ rent and end up renting the house in two months? by Julie Murphy
Why not consider an easy, cost effective solution - overlay countertops? Several types of materials can be used right on top of your old countertop with many advantages: (more…) Update Your Move-out Checklist
A move out checklist is the key to maintaining harmony, and to getting your property back on time and in good condition. Make sure yours is up-to-date:   Add Super Saver to any membership for only $ 19.95! 
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You’ve heard of home staging – dressing up a vacant rental property with furnishings that give it that “Home Sweet Home” feel. 
Your occupancy rates are down and you are competing with other apartment communities for residents.
While there may be some similarities, low-income housing is not the same as Section 8. Rather than receiving rental income from the government, property owners who run low-income properties are eligible for the 
Q: I have a tenant who recently signed a two-year lease for my rental home. She just contacted me indicating that she has been approached by her employer about transferring to another city for a promotion with the company. She wanted me to voluntarily let her out of the lease, but I declined, as the rental market here is not that strong and it took me three months to rent the house. 
So, your renters are not interested in looking at those old coffee stains or lovely series of stripes from years of not using a cutting board on the formica countertops? Hmmm.
Maybe it’s the high carbs, the beers used as bribes, or sheer exhaustion, but move-out time for tenants breeds temporary insanity. It’s a time when the quest for friends with strong arms or a pickup truck makes strange bedfellows. Things get left behind, other tenants get annoyed, and the landlord may get caught prepping the unit for the next tenant with no time to spare. 
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