Anaheim Property Management Blog

Property management companies use different marketing channels, and offer varying compensation to find tenants for their vacant properties. At Progressive Property Management, Inc., we put all of our listings on the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) and offer a commission to the agent who brings the tenant we ultimately place in the property. Why do we do this? The MLS is a powerful database of properties that shares it data with thousands of websites including Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and many more sites. Most renters are using the internet to find properties, and these sites are the most visited. We charge our owners 25% of the first month's rent as a "tenant acquisition fee" and offer this to the agent or person who brings the qualified tenant to us. On a $2,000 a month rental this equals $500. There are many agents happy to earn this fee and will drive tenants to our properties. Also, no agent is going to show a potential tenant properties without knowing there is some compensation involved. Other companies rely on their website and put the property in Craigslist to lease their units. There are 2 big problems with this strategy: 1) very few people out of the pool of potential lease candidates are visiting a property management company's website compared those that are going to Rent.com, Zillow or Realtor.com and 2) Craigslist is the wild, wild west with little or no standards or control. We use Craigslist as a supplement to our MLS marketing, but not as a replacement. This year we will place over 150 tenants in our properties and the average time it takes to secure a tenant is 14 days. A property sitting vacant empty, not collecting rent, is a huge cost to the owner. We believe it is much wiser to pay $300 to $600 to an agent who is motivated to lease our rentals quickly. If the tenant stays longer than 1-year, that fee becomes a minor expense. I looked at a property management company yesterday that manages 150 units and had 15 properties for lease, sitting vacant on their website. The don't use the MLS and don't offer a commission so the owner is paying "nothing"....but the truth is these owners are paying a high price while their properties sit vacant on the website where the vast majority of general public has no idea they are available.