The RentJuice Blog

The RentJuice Blog Weekly RoundUp – January 27, 2012

Did you miss this week’s blog? Don’t worry, check out the summary of the week:

The RentJuice Insider: Meet Eric Montero, Customer Success Manager – Get to know the RentJuicer that enjoys supporting our customers. (He'd even want to teleport to them, if he could.)

The Double Take Listing: Renovate, then Take Pictures – When you’re renovating your apartment, wait until it’s finished before you take property photographs.

How to Create Better Listings: Writing Content that Converts – The sequel to our popular Publishing whitepaper. Learn how to create ads with content that attracts more renters.  

The Apartment Search: Finding Excellent Customer Service – Winning over renters isn’t all about your property. It involves customer service, too. Learn why this renter valued customer service most.

The Apartment Search: How a Renter Searches Online – Renters are bombarded with hundreds to thousands of listings. Learn how they navigate through the overwhelming amount of apartment ads.

The RentJuice Insider: Meet Eric Montero, Customer Success Manager

On a daily basis, he provides solutions and builds relationships with RentJuice customers. Eager to help customers, you’ll most likely find him chatting to customers or hosting RentJuice webinars.

Get to know our Customer Success Manager from a recent interview:

Q: What do you like about your job?

The moment when I’m on the phone with a customer, and I show them a better way of doing something. You see that light bulb turn on, and realize how much easier you just made their day. One of the perks of working at a start-up is that I get to work on so many different features. It’s not really a “grind” position. It’s so dynamic.

Q: What are the challenges you face in your position?

Occasionally, you get a difficult situation. I try to think of the issue from the customer's perspective. I think, “How is this affecting their business?”

However, if they need to vent, let them vent. All I can do is be understanding and let them know you’re happy to work with them to resolve the issue. 

Q: What do you think about the RentJuice product?

It’s a pretty big game changer in rentals.

I believe in going for the gold and the company’s mission. What we’re trying to accomplish helps someone at work everyday. I can’t imagine working at a place where I don’t stand behind the product.

Q: If you had a super power to help you at work, what would it be?

Teleportation. I’d want to teleport all over the country to meet and help customers, instead of over the phone.

Q: What’s a little-known fact about you?

I played soccer for over 15 years.

The Double Take Listing: Renovate, Then Take Pictures

We understand that it’s difficult to take professional-looking pictures of your rental property when you’re not a photographer. While you may be no Ansel Adams, nail down the basics of rental property photography before you start clicking the camera. 

In this Craigslist listing, there were four pictures. There was also something wrong with each one. Learn from this ad and avoid these apartment photography blunders. 

Lesson #1: Clean up.

Property photos shouldn’t look like a renter just moved out. When there are boxes, and clutter all over the place, it makes your property look unpolished. 

Instead, move the clutter or stage your unit. At the very least, push aside all of the boxes and unnecessary items from the camera shot, so your place looks empty, not messy. 

Lesson #2: Take meaningful pictures. 

Don’t just take pictures of anything! You want to make your unit look its best, remember? It’s really difficult to highlight entire rooms when you’re taking pictures of sinks and closet doors. It doesn’t do your property any justice, and may cause renters to believe you have something to hide or the room is tiny. 

As mentioned in a previous post on rental property photography, try to take pictures including three walls instead of one or two. This will make your room look larger and give bigger scope of the room. 

Lesson #3: Avoid taking pictures of construction 

Repainting your unit? Great. Renters don’t want to see it get painted. They don’t want photographs of your property being worked on, they want to see the end result. 

Pictures like this make properties look sloppy and doesn’t give renters a good idea of what they’d move into. Exercise some patience before taking the photograph and wait for your property to renovated first, then take pictures. 

Now that you know what pictures not to post, learn how to take better property pictures. Or, better yet, learn how to make great content for your online listings. 

How to Create Better Listings: Writing Content that Converts

In our first publishing guide, you learned how to increase the number of views that your rental ads got. Things like when to publish listings and what types of subject lines to avoid. Itʼs easily our most downloaded resource. Now, by popular demand, weʼve developed a second guide that focuses on how to create better content within those ads.

Clicks donʼt matter when it comes to ads. Not as much as leads do. Effective online advertising principles spark the interest of renters and entice them to apply. Poor ads are skipped, compromise your credibility, or fail to interest your prospective renters. Create a winning ad with compelling and practical content to increase rental leads with these five ad publishing tips.

Download the rest of our guide for 5 tips to writing better ads for more rental conversions. 

The Apartment Search: Finding Excellent Customer Service

After renters whittle down the amount of apartment listings to a manageable few, they take the next step and start reaching out. Once e-mails start going out and phone start to ring, only half the work is done in closing out the lease. As soon as you make contact with a prospective renter, you’re being judged.

Hitting the wrong note with a renter risks losing a potential lead. That’s why you need to watch what you say and how you say it. 

Exceptional customer service was what Ellen Mae Valdez, a renter relocating to Texas, used to pick a property. In yesterday's post, we discussed her online search process. After she narrowed down her choices, impeccable customer service was key to signing her next lease. 

Customer service as a quality indicator.

According to Valdez, she weighed the quality of an apartment a lot on the customer service provided. She said, “When I talked to agents, 50 percent of my interest was in affordability, 30 percent in environment and amenities, and 20 percent in customer service.”

Rental professionals that were unprepared and unpolished got their properties tossed to the bottom of the pile. Treat every prospective renter like it's your only renter. If renters have questions, you’re expected to have answers. Even if you don’t have the answers right away, your commitment to finding them shows renters your dedication to helping them. Renters like that.

Using customer service for the long haul.

Renters look for quality customer service from rental professionals because they want positive interactions in the future. When renters look for a rental broker, they want someone they can use again when they need to move.  Property managers and landlords are expected to help tenants when things go wrong in the unit. Renters use their first impressions of rental professionals as indicators of quality service.

Valdez said, “When you rent, it’s not your property. You have to call other people to fix things. I want to know that if I have a problem, I won’t be slapped on the wrist for it. I don’t want to be penalized for requests or questions I have.”

Once renters choose a property, they’re making a commitment to the property and to relationship with the rental professional. Give them respect, answer their questions and be friendly. Renters want to know they’ll be taken care of during their tenancy, and won’t be neglected. 

The Apartment Search: How A Renter Searches Online

Renters needing to move or find a new apartment head straight for their computers to help start the search for a new home. It can be difficult to figure out what renters are thinking as they go through this process.

Ellen Mae Valdez, a registered nurse, who relocated from California to Texas, told us about her rental search process. Her methods prove that renters are particular and sensitive to many small details that are frequently overlooked by rental professionals.

The search started on Google.

Completely unfamiliar with her new hometown, Valdez started her research for her new Texas home on Google. She searched “Apartments in Temple, Texas,” which is a very common search for people looking for apartments in a specific city. In fact, the most common search word for rental searches is “apartment,” as noted in the guide on creating “Better Rental Websites.”

While on Google, Valdez looked at the results on the first page, assuming that the best results would appear first. Renters are quick to make decisions, and expect Google to give them the best results first. That’s why renters focus their attention on the top search results, and neglect the rest. If you want your rental business to get visibility on Google, rental professionals need to channel energy into SEO, which helps get websites higher in Google search results.

Then, she went to Craigslist.

While some renters go to Craigslist first, Valdez went to it second. She skipped listings with subject lines that obviously were visually trying to grab her attention. “I skipped the ones with all caps or up and down letters,” she said, “It’s like they were yelling at me. I didn’t like that. It was also unreadable.” Writing visually distracting subject lines grab renters’ attention, but make sure it’s the right kind.

Once she started opening apartment ads, she looked for one major item: a link to an external website. Apartment rental listing on Craigslist are a sufficient way of getting essential information about a unit to a prospective renter, but a rental website is expected to give more details. Valdez said, “If they don’t have a link, I don’t go much further.”

She felt that if a rental business is professional, it should have a website to support it. She said, “The website is the first impression you get from the business.”

Websites need to be intuitive.

Rental websites need to answer all the questions renters may have by including all the information they need. Requiring renters to call for more information is one additional step they don’t really want to take. 

“The websites needed to be especially intuitive,” Valdez said, “They need to include enough details about the apartment, and be organized.” Websites that didn’t provide the details she needed, she abandoned.

Rental websites that are easy to navigate are essential for renters. Renters on websites that don’t tend to their needs will find one that will. Websites that cover their bases will get rental leads.

Learn about how this renter decided on a property based on one factor in tomorrow’s blog post.

The RentJuice Blog Weekly Roundup – January 20, 2012

Here’s what happened on the RentJuice Blog this week.

How to Use Your Smartphone to Help Close Leases – Learn how to use Smartphones to close deals with renters.

Will Rental Leasing One Day Be Completely Digital? – Are we seeing the last days of paperwork and face-to-face meetings in rentals? See what direction technology is pushing the rental business.

10 Must-Have Smartphone Apps for Rental Real Estate Professionals – Don’t know what apps to download on your Smartphone? Start here. These apps will help make your job easier.

How to Use E-mail Marketing to Keep Your Rental Vacancies Filled – Learn how to use e-mail marketing strategies to reach out to prospective renters and to keep current tenants’ business.

4 Reasons You Need a Smartphone for Your Rental Business – Smartphones are helping rental professionals everywhere with their business. If you’ve been on the fence about getting a Smartphone, read these compelling reasons. 

How to Use Your Smartphone to Help Close Leases

As discussed in our previous post, the rental real estate industry is going digital rapidly. At some point, the way that rental professionals interact with prospective and current tenants will happen over the internet. 

Previously, we gave you 4 reasons to start using a Smartphone for your rental business. Now that you finally own one, learn how you can use it to seal the deal with renters. 

Check to see what other listings are available in your database.

At a showing, if a current property isn’t resonating with one of your prospective tenants, you head back to the drawing board. It can cause you to go back to your office, because you need the computer to look through your inventory database.

Access to your online database through your mobile phone allows rental professionals to truly work anywhere, especially while on-the-go. As we all know, as your schedule starts to fill up, the time you spend behind your desk decreases. Some rental marketing software allows you to access your database on mobile devices. So, when you’re out at a showing, and you don’t have a match, quick access to your database will allow you to make another match in minutes.

Carry your documents in your phone.

Is your renter ready to sign some paperwork? Whether a prospective renter wants to fill out a lease or an application after visiting a property, you may find yourself carrying extra papers with you or sending digital copies when you get back to your office.

Smartphones can store lots of data, especially your important documents. Save your paperwork in a PDF form and store it in your Smartphone. Use an application like DropBox to sync files between your office computer, Smartphone, or any other digital device. So, when you’re at a showing and your renter is ready to go with paperwork, you can immediately send all the documents to them by e-mail within seconds. Also, if you own an iPad, you can also use this to have them digitally sign documents with PDF applications that allow users to type in fields, such as Noterize.

Will Rental Leasing One Day Be Completely Digital?

Prospective renters used to turn to the paper’s Classifieds to find their next apartment, circling and highlighting potential properties, then inquiring by phone call on a landline phone.

Today, the newspaper Classifieds is a seldom-used medium for renters to find their next property. Renters turn to online listing sites like Craigslist or Apartments.com, fill out online forms, or find the location of the property in maps embedded in listings. 

The digital world slowly crept up on us and is replacing nearly every once-manual task in the rental prospecting procedure. Renters get video tours of an apartment, analyzing how “walkable” a property is by its Walk Score and even deciding who to give business based on online reviews. 

So, the next natural question is: What’s next?

In my opinion, the rental industry’s digital usage is still in its infancy. Paperwork and face-to-face interactions will dwindle. One day, renters won’t need to attend showings or fill out paper applications, because it’ll be handled digitally. Rather than stopping by a broker’s office, renters will start to video conference through medium like Skype or FaceTime.   

The rise of digital tablets and Smartphones are game changers, also. Renters don’t need a computer to browse listings, and can do it on-the-go. Those looking to move are checking listings anywhere and everywhere on their downtime – on the bus, waiting in line, or even on their lunch break. One day, renters will be able to find a listing, talk to an agent, take a tour and sign a lease in a swift series on their mobile device.

Technology in rentals is moving forward, and it’s moving fast. The tasks that you’re doing manually now will one day be performed digitally. To those who are reluctant to incorporating technology into their rental business: What will you do when the renters start signing leases straight from their iPads or Smartphone? Getting in front of technology isn’t an easy job, but as more renters adopt new technologies, you should as well.

10 Must-Have Smartphone Apps for Rental Real Estate Professionals

Smartphones are one of the most important technology tools that a rental professional owns. A rental professional’s Smartphone has the capacity to perform all of the tasks that would be done at an office desk. 

Here are 10 Smartphone apps that are helping rental professionals: 

1. Evernote – (Free)

Android, iPhone, iPad, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry

Never worry about carrying a notebook with your when doing your rental business ever again. Take pictures of your units that you want to save for later use or jot down any notes you have from your showings. Tag your notes to organize them, and never worry about saving your notes, since all notes are auto-saved. 

2. My Measures & Dimensions – ($5.99)

Android, iPhone, iPad

It’s hard to imagine a room with only the dimensions. Give renters a better idea of the size of your property with this application. Take a picture of your unit, and add arrows, angles and text. Send your picture with the added dimensions to renters straight from the application.

3. 360 Panorama – ($0.99)

Android, iPhone, iPad

Give renters a 360 degree view of your property. This application turns your phone into a 360 degree camera. It’ll give renters a feeling of what it’s like to be standing in the property. Also, post your 360 pictures straight to Facebook. 

4. Curbed – (Free)

iPhone, iPad

Get the latest news in Real Estate, design, and neighborhoods in major metropolitan cities and nationally. Stay on top of the news in both the sales and rentals industries.

5. Zillow  - (Free)

Android, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry

Get the rent ranges an apartment can be rented for. See what homes and apartments are up for rent, and share them by e-mail, Facebook and Twitter.

6. Craigspro+ - ($0.99)

Android, iPhone, iPad

If you try to look at Craigslist on your Smartphone’s browser, you’ll end up zooming in, zooming in, then zooming in more. Check out your Craigslist listings out on a user-friendly interface with this application, making it easier to navigate through Craigslist listings.

 7. DropBox – (Free)

Android, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry

It’s a hassle to take pictures of unit and later connecting your phone to computer to upload them. Eliminate the cords and wirelessly upload pictures and any other documents from your Smartphone and access them on your computer. Your files will live in “the cloud” and will appear on any device you download DropBox. 

8. Walk Score – (Free)

iPhone, iPad

Want to know the Walk Score of a particular apartment? Get the Walk Score of any location and get a map of nearby amenities. Tell renters how walkable your unit is on the spot.

9. iMovie – ($4.99)

iPhone, iPad

Make a professional-looking movie of your rental property. This application allows you to edit your videos and easily add pictures, sound and themes. Publish your videos from your Apple device directly to YouTube, Facebook or Vimeo.

10. RentJuice – (Free)

iPhone, iPad

Okay, okay, we know this one is a little self-serving, but we promise it’s a worthwhile app. Rental professionals can carry their entire database wherever they go and update listings in real-time. Instantly update property photos from your iPhone. Even call, text message or e-mail your agents, tenants or landlords straight from the application.