Finding Tenants in the Internet Age
(Editor’s note: This whitepaper was written by Brent Davies and distributed by the Real Estate Investment Network at the L.I.F.E. Weekend and Economic Summit in June 2009)
Property managers and landlords are constantly looking for quality tenants. In March 2008, we
ran some tests on Internet advertising because the response to both our newspaper and internet
rental ads in Edmonton, Alberta had decreased. We felt that this type of advertising was not cost-
effective and we were not getting a large enough number of applicants to find great tenants.
We decided to try Internet advertising because it is frequently used by out-of-town residents who
are looking to move to Edmonton. These people are usually young blue-collar tradesmen,
looking to take advantage of Edmonton’s low unemployment rate. We find these tenants are
desirable because once they find a job they usually make good long-term tenants.
In 2006 we discovered an oddity in our properties. A majority of the tenants in our higher end
rental suites and homes owned at least one computer. On the other hand, only 3 of 22 tenants in
one of our lower income buildings had computers. Home internet use was a sign of prosperity.
We felt that by using internet advertising we would be able to screen out lower income tenants
who don’t have computers and would have too low an income to be consistent tenants.
We tested our advertising in March of 2008 by placing five identical ads on different rental
websites. Each website listed a different email and phone number, allowing us to track the
effectiveness of each ad.
The sites we used were:
- Gottarent.com
- Rentedmonton.com
- Rentfaster.ca
- Albertarent.com
- Homerent.ca
Prior to this test, our marketing was based on all calls and inquiries to a central number. Inquires
were asked where they got our name, the internet as the answer. Many times they could not
remember the website.
Our questions were:
- Was our current program of internet ads working? We were using Rentfaster.ca as our primary website.
- Which rental websites led to the most inquiries?
- Was there one site we could use exclusively?
Fill out the form to download the full 12 page whitepaper with the complete results:
November 9th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Thanks for sharing this resource. I appreciated what this started and what Chris did for us in Ontario as well. Big Thanks.