How Landlords Can Overcome High Vacancy Rates

If you had a property with high vacancy rates, then the first thing is to figure out why. You could start by talking with neighboring tenants, property owners and business owners to see what you can find out.

These are the sort of things you will want to clarify:

• Is your vacancy rate in line with other properties in the neighborhood?
• Is the local market or economy going through a bad patch?
• Is your rent too high when compared to other properties in the area?
• Is there something happening in the neighborhood that is driving tenants away (ie: gang activity, businesses going under, etc.)?
• Are there better properties available for similar or lower rentals?
• Is there something wrong with the property such as the wrong number of bedrooms, bad location, poor facilities, poor condition, too much maintenance, poor garaging etc.
• Is your advertising effective?
• Have you tried advertising on the internet?
• What kind of concessions (move-in incentives) is the competition offering?
• Should you offer similar concessions or incentives? Possibilities might include a "rent free" period of a few weeks or months, a complimentry gift basket or shopping voucher, a temporary rent reduction?
• Keep your current tenants happy (maintenance, return their calls, etc)...they will give you referrals. Should you include the utilities in the rent?

Íf you are going to solve a problem of high vacancies then the answers to those question will be a good starting point?