Last modified on June 29th, 2015
By Elizabeth Millar

While some industries have “spring fever,” Real Estate professionals save the craziest time of the year for the summer months. From May 2014 to August 2014 an estimated 60 percent of all homes that were actively for sale were sold / purchased. The fierce competition means that it is time to review a few helpful tips to help your vacant property be seen and rented.

Top Three Tips to Advertising Summer Rental Vacancies
Tip # 1: Get active on social media. — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, your company blog, or all four; when it comes to social media, your audience is waiting and active during the summer months. Advertising your summer vacancies requires you to keep your intended audience in mind. What types of posts will keep them on your page? How will you get them to share the property, click to learn more, or call you to schedule an appointment? Keep these following tips in mind when posting on social media sites.

• Photos have the highest engagement levels from fans.
• Post local updates to connect with the local market.
• Promote user generated content to enhance audience engagement levels.
• Include “how-to” posts. A recent Hubspot report found that how-to posts received an average of 18.42 percent of shares.
• Use popular hashtags to easily promote your summer vacancies to like-minded individuals. For example #summerrental, #beautiful, #architecture, and #beachlife can help you to reach someone who is interested in renting for the summer, is interested in architectural elements, and wants a property that is on the beautifully situated on the beach.

Tip # 2: Use free internet listing services. — There are several free Real Estate listing services that can help you to easily promote your vacancies to hundreds (if not thousands) of interested tenants. HotPads, Oodle, Trulia and Vast are some of the best known free Real Estate listing services. To really make your advertisement pop, consider the following tips.

• Add photos of the property, surrounding area, and community amenities.
• Use buzzwords in moderation. While buzzwords are great, they can become disingenuous when they are used in abundance.
• Highlight the property’s best features with bullets or numbered lists.
• Clearly and easily provide your contact information at the beginning and end of your ad.
• If the site offers a “premier certificate” or a “certificate of trust” make sure that you apply and proudly display the badge. Interested tenants want to know from the start that you can be trusted.

Tip # 3: Be flexible. — Summer is an incredibly busy time of the year for many people and the last thing that they want to do is get caught leaving work early so that they can go look at new properties. Make sure that your advertisement promotes flexibility.

• Clearly advertise when the property is available to lease.
• Make it known if there are set viewing hours.
• Distinctly display contact information.
• Allow interested tenants to contact you via phone, email, or in-person.
• If you have more than one property available, make it known. Interested tenants are more likely to sign a lease if they can easily compare more than one residential property at a time.

Real Estate advertising requires you to be creative, smart, and diligent. Follow-up on all leads, build strong industry relationships, and keep the above three tips in mind. To beat out your competition and lease your rental properties to valuable tenants, you will need to leverage the power of social media, advertise on popular free Real Estate listing sites, and be flexible.