The lack of tenants has hit North Idaho. I have two available. For one house I have had one applicant (rejected) and one call from a couple whose lease expires Aug 31 and wants something in September.

The other house, I got my very first response today from a person who is moving here but doesn't have a job lined up.

This is with over 2 weeks of advertising. I suppose next week, I will start to get the applicants who have less than a week to move but that type is never good.

Big investors have carpeted this area with huge nicer quality apartment complexes and the apartments are obviously begging for tenants because they are dropping rents. At some point people who want a house are going to settle for an apartment if the rent discrepancy gets too huge.

Although I have no way of knowing whether or not they are filling their vacancies

I just got 70 inquiries in 3 days with a townhouse I put on Zillow. I'm in the Harrisburg, PA area. I had 50 in the 1st day and rented it to 760 FICO score couple.

You'll have to lower your rent or offer 2 months free as well.

A couple of challenges Jeffery has you do at boot camp is separate your marketing from your advertising.

He further has you list five to seven different ways that you advertise your empties. Why is that important? I found out I was only advertising my units a couple of ways before.

Additionally, he was able to demonstrate that in my rush into automation of system, that I was allowing multiple fulling qualified applicants to slip away to others because I was looking for the laziest way of doing business. Now I am not going to say others are doing this at all.

I am sure everyone answers the phone always. But he makes a great point by asking, why give out your phone number if you are not willing to answer. Why worry about giving out your address when it is published in a phone book. If you are investing in an area where this is a concern - you have bigger issues than marketing or advertising. Yet you can read about bad business practices weekly here. I give up on trying to help out for free.

Please spend the money and get training. It is a wise investment - or you can enjoy continuing having a heavily automated system that reminds you of all the money you are loosing out on.

Still too cheap to do that? There is FREE local and online help at score (dot) org. You will have to customize the marketing and advertising plans for either landlording or buying business models

I don't answer my phone, I give out my website. I have not found that answering the phone ever got me a good tenant. Ever. Even back in the day when answering the phone was normal. (Today it's not. People text.) BUT if I ever *do* put my phone number in an ad, the ONLY people who actually call are bad. Usually someone's mom looking to tell me their story, and that they will pay their adult child's rent.

Addresses are not listed in phone books - phone books don't exist anymore. And even if they did, phone numbers are not linked to addresses anymore.

"I don't answer my phone, I give out my website. I have not found that answering the phone ever got me a good tenant."

99.9% of the applicants I get either text or message me on the whatever platform I'm using to advertise. The few who call usually are trying to apply with a "story. Even if I wanted to answer the phone, I simply would not get calls.