Is it hard to find good tenants nowadays? (Atlanta, Acworth: section 8, for sale)

[syschroeder]

Hi,

I need to find good tenants for the house in Acworth. Does anyone know if it is easy or hard to find good tenants nowadays? I posted an ad in Craiglist without the picture of the house and only received three reply.

Any answers will be truely appreciated.

Marsha

[noah]

I think the current environment is tough for landlords because of job lost and people looking to spend less combined with more rentals from accidental landlords because they can't sell.

But how long have you advertised on Craigslist. Why are you not including pictures. Are you using other methods of Advertising. Are you charging market rent? Price matters, especially today.

I'd say 3 replies without posting pictures is a good start.

Originally Posted by syschroeder

Hi,

I need to find good tenants for the house in Acworth. Does anyone know if it is easy or hard to find good tenants nowadays? I posted an ad in Craiglist without the picture of the house and only received three reply.

Any answers will be truely appreciated.

Marsha

[syschroeder]

Thanks for the reply. I think I am going to lower the price.

[atl-gal]

I think you need to post photos. People want to see the state of the property before replying to an ad. With craigslist, this is very easy to do!

[anadyr21]

I personally wouldn't consider renting a house without pics. Though, even with pics, some people try to rent houses in horrible condition. As a possible renter, that would be my concern. Also, as has been stated, some people are concerned about accidental landlords. Good luck.

[atlantagreg30127]

As everyone said, you need photos. If I'm looking at homes (for sale) or items for sale, I'd never even reply to the ad myself if there were no photos of the home/item. If I were looking for a rental place, likewise, I probably would just skip by the ad if it didn't indicate there were photos of it - with no photos, I feel like the person is trying to hide something or doesn't want me to see something off the bat, etc.

But to directly answer your question, yes, it IS harder today to find good tenants. I've lived in Atlanta since 1984, and have known a good number of people who had places they leased in that time. Back in the 80s and early 90s, many of them found good people to rent their places, but after that things seemed to slide down quite a bit. As of late, it seems that 9 out of 10 people who answer rental ads are illegal immigrants, section 8, or people who want to secretly raise Pit Bulls in the basement. As a result, most folks I know now don't bother with renting their properties anymore. They just sell them, even if it means taking a hit with the sell price.

Keep trying for a while to see, though. If your area is desirable enough and you have those pics, you might luck out and find some nice folks. Don't lower the price too much as you indicated. You want to compare to other local rentals, but you have to factor in the cost of cleaning/repainting/maintenance when they move out as WELL as paying the mortage.

[bigforkn deal]

I'd be interested in seeing the pictures of the house- We will be moving to that area in June, and will be looking for something suitable.

[JPD]

Originally Posted by anadyr21

I personally wouldn't consider renting a house without pics. .

Me neither. I never bother with anything on Craigslist if there isn't a picture.

[justhere]

We've done the no picture route and only once did it turn out to be a total gem! Other than that, it was usually worse than what we feared. The last no-picture one we looked at, the owner was in the middle of renovation. The outside of the house was very, very nice and neat. But inside, apparently his contractor quit (aka he ran out of money) so he enlisted the help of his son, who was less than eager to help out. We walk in to look at the house and the livingroom is simply delish! You just wanna move all your stuff in and start watching the tube and eating snacks. Then, we migrate to all the other rooms -- all the cabinets in the kitchen are torn out and lying in the floor, tile has been pulled up and we are looking at cement, drywall missing, doors hanging off hinges. He begins telling us the 'story' and man, I think my energy just slid out my body, to the end of my foot, crawled to the door and left. It was a draining experience. We thanked him and left. I felt sorry for the guy, but no way were we going to rent that place only to have to hear the 'story' everytime something needed to be fixed. (DH just gave him the 'eye' because he was thinking, we were getting the story because the guy has to recoup his money somehow on top of the rent, and we weren't going to be the source.)

Short story long Give a good outside pic, a kitchen pic, a bedroom pic and a bathroom pic.

[chacho]

People have said they skip through postings without pictures... I go a step further and make use of the "has image" search function. I think 3 responses is very good for not having a picture...