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Tips & Costs to Advertise Rental Property

tips to advertise your rental property
There are numerous low cost ways to advertise your rental property

Every business needs customers to generate revenue. For landlords, those customers are tenants. So when a tenant vacates, it is critical for the landlord to fill the empty unit as quickly as possible. The longer the rental property is empty, the longer the landlord does not make any money. Here are some tips on how landlords can advertise rental property effectively and associated costs:

1. Decide Where to Advertise

Landlords should think about where most of their tenants will search for an available property to rent. Online advertising is one of the most popular and wide-reaching methods today.

Landlords can advertise listings with a real estate specific site such as Zillow or Apartments.com. Note that Zillow has recently started charging $9/week for advertising each property whereas before they had been free. Other online options include social media platforms like Facebook or Nextdoor or a more general site such as the ever popular Craigslist. Many of these online advertising options are free, which is a real plus for the landlord’s bottom line.

A simple yard sign can still catch the eyes of a promising tenant. The cost for the “For Rent” sign in your yard is minimal.

2. Post High Quality Pictures

For tenants who prefer to search online, pictures become a critical basis for decision making. Landlords should post high quality photos of the empty unit so tenants searching online have a good idea of the rental property and can make a decision from the photos alone. With today’s smartphones, landlords can take their own high quality photos instead of hiring a professional photographer. Once a tenant is serious about renting a particular property, they benefit from a physical walk through of the rental property.

3. Be Responsive to Inquiries

In describing your rental property, identify key selling points. For example, you will want to mention if you accept online rent payment, as that may be an important criteria for tenants. While the description of your property for rent should be thorough, tenants may have questions. Providing accurate contact information and responding promptly to inquiries makes your unit and your reputation as a landlord positive selling points. In terms of cost here, it will be your time again. Being a responsive landlord will help you meet your goal of filling your vacancy as quickly as possible.

Good Advertising will Fill an Empty Unit

Advertising your rental property online or on paper, showing your rental property with good pictures, and being responsive to inquiries are all steps in the right direction to filling your vacancy. The cost to advertise your rental property is reasonable, especially for some online listings. For any costs you do incur to advertise your rental property, be sure to track them with a good tool such as RentalIncomeExpense.com, which is free, follows the Schedule E income and expense categories, and enables you to generate reports.

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Why Landlords Should Not Use the Zillow Worksheet

The Zillow Worksheet is a popular spreadsheet to download that Zillow provides for landlords to track rental income and expense. It is free to download and, at first, sounds like a great way for small landlords to track income and expenses.

Zillow Worksheet Has Many Issues

Unfortunately, by the time most landlords sink hours entering in their income and expenses with Zillow Worksheet, they’ll realize its significant limitations. Paraphrasing the old movie ‘The Untouchables’, Zillow worksheet is the technological equivalent of bringing a ‘knife to a gun fight‘.

  1. There is no individual income or expense item detail tracking. With the Zillow worksheet, you can only enter in the amount for a category and month. Do you want to know what the breakdown was for your ‘Advertising’ expense between different advertising options for a given month? There’s no way to provide that detail, just a dollar amount. Do you want to search for when you made a repair to the floor? Again, no item detail means you can never track this down. This will be a HUGE headache if you’re trying to make sure that you’re properly accounting for all the expenses (as you should, to reduce your taxes as much as you should be able to).
  2. The spreadsheet is only designed for up to five properties. If you start using the Zillow worksheet, you’ll quickly run out of room if you have more units. Or, if you rent to a roommate situation and want to track which individuals have made rent payment, you’re limited again.
  3. The Zillow worksheet has no way to generate reports. Want to know the profit and loss for an individual property? You can’t do that. The Zillow worksheet only totals the income and expenses for all properties and shows that number as a cell. There is no way to see profit and loss by month. And, the categories selected in this worksheet do not match up to the IRS 1040 Schedule E categories, which means this worksheet cannot easily generate a report for Schedule E.

When one really looks at the Zillow Worksheet, it is almost malpractice for a beginning landlord to use it – it doesn’t track income and expense item details, doesn’t show basic reports like profit and loss, and doesn’t grow with a landlord’s needs. It is surprising that for years, Zillow promotes this worksheet as a viable tool.

RentalIncomeExpense.com is a Better, Free Alternative to Zillow Worksheet

A better, completely free alternative is RentalIncomeExpense.com. It is free. It allows landlords to enter income and expense detail and Schedule E categories. Profit and Loss reports can be generated with just one mouse click. And, it allows an unlimited number of properties to be tracked.

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Recordkeeping for Landlords

Owning and managing rental property is a business activity. Depending on the number of properties you own, landlording can be a full- or part-time gig. Whether you create a separate business entity or not for your rental property, recordkeeping is important primarily for tax purposes and therefore requires two types of records: (a) a record of your income and expenses, and (b) documentation of your income and expenses.

Income & Expense Records

Tracking rental property income and expenses will help you complete rental property-related tax forms, such as Form 1040 Schedule E. The tax forms will determine if you earned a profit or incurred a loss for that year from your rental property. Because Schedule E is organized by each property, you’ll want to be sure to keep income and expense records separate for each rental address.

Supporting Documentation

Documentation of your income and expenses will come in handy if you are audited. Receipts, credit card statements, and cancelled checks will prove the income earned and expenses incurred should the IRS question the information reported to them. Supporting documentation will create a paper trail and prove that your claims are correct and the tax deductions you receive are legitimate.

Worth It

Landlords with good recordkeeping habits will maximize the tax benefits of owning and managing rental property. Keeping track of income and expenses and maintaining supporting documentation will reduce the stress if audited, let you know how your landlording is doing financially, and provide overall piece of mind.

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Rental Property Accounting Software for Landlords

Tracking income and expenses for rental property is a task most landlords do not enjoy. This record keeping task is time consuming and, to be frank, often mind-numbingly boring. Nevertheless, maintaining good accounting records makes tax time easier, is important to understanding how your landlord business is doing, and provides peace of mind.

Landlords can select from a variety of ways to record income and expenses. Cost, ease-of-use, and features (like reports) are items to consider when deciding on which rental property accounting method to pursue. We’ll take a look at some common ways, from the simplest to the most complicated, for tracking rental property income and expenses.

Tracking MethodPros & Cons
Spreadsheet* Free
* Create your own with Google Docs or Microsoft Excel
* Download free rental income and expense worksheet
*Cannot easily generate reports
Free Accounting Software* Free
* Simple and intuitive
* Easily generate reports like a Schedule E Helper and Profit & Loss statement
* RentalIncomeExpense.com
Paid Accounting Software* Expensive
* Can be overkill for a small landlord
* Complex and challenging to understand
* QuickBooks, Buildium, RentecDirect
Landlord Services * Provides benefits in addition to record keeping such as online rent payments, tenant screening, credit reporting, and vacancy listings
* Many times income and expense tracking is included as a free feature
* ClearNow, Zillow Rental Manager

Final Thoughts

While tracking rental income and expenses is not the most desirable task, finding the solution that best fits the budget, is easy to use, and provides features like reports becomes important to make tax time easier and provide peace of mind. From simple spreadsheets to free accounting software to paid accounting software to general landlord services, fortunately landlords have a choice when it comes to finding the right rental property accounting software for their needs.

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Free Landlord Software For Tracking Income and Expenses

We’re starting a blog for RentalIncomeExpense.com – a free and easy rental income and expense tracking tool for landlords that our company, ClearNow, introduced back in 2016.

Expensive property management software (like Renttec Direct, Tenant Cloud, or Buildium) is overkill for the small landlord – costing more in time and money than it is worth. On the other hand, an Excel spreadsheet isn’t nearly powerful enough.  For example, it cannot easily generate the different reports that a landlord needs.

RentalIncomeExpense.com is the best of all worlds:

  • Simple to setup
  • FREE
  • Designed for landlords
  • Instant reports that matter (such as profit & loss and the 1040 Schedule E helper)
  • Accessible from your smartphone
  • Backed up by ClearNow’s proven online infrastructure (since 2000)

To setup a free account, get started at www.RentalIncomeExpense.com today!