Understanding the market value of your property is important, and a lot of owners are not charging enough for rent. If you are not charging enough for rent, you're not earning all of your potential profits, if you're charging too much, your property may sit vacant for longer than it needs to. We find that a lot of owners are only charging $1,100 in rent when after running comps for similar homes they could be charging around $1,400. Some owners may be hesitant to raise the rent when they have good tenants in place, but in reality you're giving the tenant $300 a month. That adds up to an extra $3,600 in income per year you may be missing out on!
We run comps by looking at the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). We can see the similar properties with the same number of bedrooms, bathrooms, floorplan and storage, all in your neighborhood. The MLS also tells us how long other houses in your area around the same price range took to be leased.
Some landlords look at sites like Zillow or Realtor.com but they are not always accurate. You want to use data that will reflect what people have actually rented their properties for. At Perpetual Property Management, we do this for our clients. If you work with a property management company, they will have access to additional comps that are not available to the public. We look at all rental history on the MLS to see what the property actually rented for and how long it was on market. This gives you extra data when pricing your home.
If there's an opportunity for you to make extra money, we want to present that to you. Get every penny for your investment property and your investment will be successful. Remeber that the MLS is the best place to find comps for your rental property because sites like Zillow and Realtor.com are just rough estimates. We manage properties all over the DFW Metroplex so if you'd like to access some of our resources or have any questions regarding property management, please Contact Us at