24th November 2008

HoHum Rental Market and Big Things Coming

Well, if you’re a landlord you probably already know this but the rental market is totally down in the dumps. An interesting thing I haven’t seen before is that without fail, every apartment complex has a general for-rent sign out. Some of the desperate ones even have “sign wavers” standing just outside their entrances well, waving at traffic.

I guess this is an effective business generating technique because I’ve seen the exact thing but in front of a bank (of all places.)

Anyway, I still have one vacant property available for rent and it seems that no amount of newspaper advertising is working. One afternoon recently, I had a lady call to ask what the rent was (probably a drive-by lookie loo) and then try to talk me down on the price without even asking to see it. Whatever lady!

Apart from all of that….

There are some big things coming to Landlord-Success.com. I’ve been working on an addition to the site which has been an arduous process but I think that it will come into its own after some time. I don’t want to release it until it’s good and ready to launch. Look out for the big spalsh announcement in a few weeks. Thanks for reading!

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2nd November 2008

Some Great Landlord Advice

A couple of weekends ago I had the good fortune to talk with a friend’s dad who is a veteran of the landlord business. This guy owns 175 units in Lake Worth, Florida and has been a landlord, as well as being in other businesses he started, for many years.

The conversation started out with me lamenting the fact that the economy is totally putting a damper on my rental business and that I thought that with scale (more rental units) things would be better. It turns out that his vacancy rate is not much different than mine which was kind of comforting. By the way, another landlord friend in West Palm Beach, FL also mentioned that her vacancy rate was lower but said that hardly any of her tenants were paying on time and in short, she is having to do a lot more work to maintain her business. Also comforting to know that I’m not alone.

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