Small Business Philippines

So, you’ve bought a property, and decided you want to rent it out. Now there are plenty of different articles available to tell you everything you need to know to get set up, but do they cover the most important aspect? The most basic, most vitally important part of it? Probably not. In fact, do you even know what it is? Take a guess.

Most likely, if you’ve thought about it at all, you will have easily come up with a myriad different possibilities. Perhaps you have considered getting the property ready for renters, and ensuring that the building itself is all set up. Of course, this is important, nobody could deny that, but is not in fact the most important.

Maybe you’ve thought about the legal side of things, for example preparing a good application form, with all the details that you need on it. Or deciding how to decide which tenants are acceptable, and how to arrange the payments and security and damage deposits. You have to put together a complete business plan, and make certain that you know what you are doing and when.

Possibly, you are thinking about future issues after you have begun renting. For example, deciding rules on pets and subletting, or how you intend to resolve disputes. I hope that all of this has been included in your business plan, but as I’m sure you’re aware, it can be difficult to plan ahead when you don’t know what’s coming. So perhaps, the most important thing, is being ready for anything. Unfortunately, not quite- but a good guess none the less.

As a matter of fact, the most important, and unfortunately overlooked, pert of setting yourself up to rent property is also the simplest and most obvious - Finding someone to rent it. Once you’ve got your building set up, you still need to find people willing to pay you to live there. Have you made any plans as to how you intend to go about it?

Clearly, you need to find a way to advertise. The saying, “build it and they will come” is a nice idea in theory, but really does not work in practice. A much better system, is “tell them and they will come”. So you better start looking for ways to get the word out!

Notices. Posters. Billboards. Any other physical sign. This works well if you’re looking for people from a specific area, for example if you want to rent to students, you can post notices around local campuses. However, it is also expensive, and the results are rarely as good as you would like.

Newspaper ads. Potentially a much better idea, this does give you the benefit that a much larger number of people will see it. However, it doesn’t give you any guarantees as to how many will follow up on it, and can also be costly- unless you restrict yourself to your local freeads to similar. Still, it may be worth a shot, but is certainly not the most efficient.

Radio and television. A nice idea in theory, but in practice, it costs much more then it is worth. In fact, this can even be less effective then posters, and so is far from a real consideration.

Internet. Now, here’s a good idea. Everyone uses the internet, and so you’ve got a large audience ready made and available. As an added bonus, it’s targeted, as only the people who are interested will be looking at your site. This should give you the best response of any of these, although you do need to pick the right site.

There are lots of different websites to post to, all of which can easily be located through a quick search of google. Of course, with this much choice, you don’t want to waste your time posting to an unsuitable site. So have a look at them, and think about what’s important. You need to find somewhere that looks good to visitors, and is easy to navigate. If it is not clear how to use the site, then visitors won’t bother, and you won’t get any results.

In the end, as you are looking through all these sites, you’ll probably notice that there is something similar about all of them: they are charging you to post on them. As wonderful as the internet undoubtedly is, you may think twice about using it when you see what is charged. I know I did. However, you now have another option- free sites. Only occurring recently, there are a small number of excellent websites that actually offer their services completely free.

For example, take a look at localets.co.uk. It’s an excellently designed site, with everything you could want, and it’s completely free. Who says that property advertising should be expensive? It shouldn’t the prices some people are charging are simply crazy. It is well worth your time and effort to track down a number of sites like these, and sign up to all of them. After all, what have you to lose? It’s totally free. And if you still feel the need, you can always sign up to one or more of the others as well.

So there it is. The most essential, vital, part of renting is finding people to rent from you. And the best way to do that, is to advertise online. What are you waiting for? Get on with you, and start doing it!

Author Paul Fogarty is an expert at renting property. Click here to visit his bedsits site.