Best places to list a rental property?

Lheijira on 04/02/2015 - 11:47

Hi collective knowledge base that is Ozbargain!

Have found the advice on these forums very helpful throughout various life stages. I am now at another stage in life, where I have been able to secure my first investment property (huzzah!). The place has been completely renovated and now I am looking to find some tenants to move in.

Questions:

1) Should I go through an agent? At this stage I cannot really see the benefit of going through an agent other than they can supposedly "filter" bad tenants better (still hear a lot of horror stories).

2) If I was to list privately, what are some good places to do so? I have already placed an ad on gumtree and had some traction, but my concern is that gumtree may not be targeting the sort of demographic I am interested in. ie. a lot of interest I have had so far from gumtree seems to be for short term leases, with the candidates coming from overseas on a contract etc.

Ideally I want to find professionals that are looking for a longer term lease 6+ months preferably the longer the better.

Thanks again, and I look forward to hearing from your experiences.

M.

Home & Garden

Comments

  • tomleonhart on 04/02/2015 - 14:35

    Call me stupid. But I think agent is there to help you deal with the tenant, bad or good.

    Yes Agent helps you filter out bad tenants but nothing is 100% risk free. As human we all change hence why the horror stories.

    And when you manage the property by yourself, are you ready to confront and chase up if the tenants don't pay, are you ready to chase them up if they thrash your place? are you ready to send them invoices with rates? are you ready to follow up ?

    Surely someone will reply to my post with examples of agent not doing their jobs and the owner will better off doing it themselves.

    If you're ready to do all those tasks should they arise, gumtree is a good place to start. Word of mouth is another way or facebook it.

    • heijira on 05/02/2015 - 15:27

      Thanks for your reply! Hearing from others, the agents are pretty useless when the tenants go bad too. ie. they will only refer you to the tribunal etc and then the ball is back in your court.

  • maximum on 13/02/2015 - 01:41

    To manage your property yourself you have to make sure you are willing and able to put in the time and effort but it can be worth it.
    Probably not the tenants you are looking for but I placed an ad in the local school newsletter and found this worked well - you got established people who also were reading the newsletter (ie better and more organised than me.)

  • rowenaduncan on 14/02/2015 - 00:03

    From both sides of the fence… As an owner, I found our agent did almost nothing for the commission paid. Had no problem finding tenants, but left it 6 weeks before telling me my tenants had stopped paying the rent. Then decided they wanted nothing more to do with it as it was a dead-end street to chase them…. I'll stop there. On the other side - as a renter, I find it almost impossible to get to an inspection/showing because both myself and my partner work full-time and we're not willing to take repeated time off for a "maybe". Which leads me to wonder whether the unemployed have the greater advantage? When we enquire, we tell the agents over the phone that we both work, but they are reluctant to have viewings after 5pm, and they seem to just want to take the first person who shows up. We have been renting from our current real estate for over 5 years, with no issues and glowing reports, but even this combined with the offer of allowing them to do a credit check on us both (we can and do pay ALL our bills) seems to make no difference. Side note: we are in our current rental because the owner was very specific with the agent about her requirement of a tenant. My opinion - either way, take your time to find the RIGHT tenant. In the long run, it will save you a lot of possible grief and money.

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