Affluent but Frugal

 Nothing makes me want to hire a property manager like showing a house for rent. Then I think how much a property manager costs and decide I can handle a little hassle once in a while :) For me the absolute worst part of showings is people who just don't show up. I think back to my renter days and I don't think I ever no-showed to an appointment to see a rental. Ok, ok, maybe one time in college when I was looking at places and my mom insisted the neighborhood was too sketchy. Even then, I think we called the guy and to let him know. But the fact is, most people don't have the courtesy to cancel, they just don't show up. Rude! So how can we reduce the annoyance of no-shows? Here my top tips. 1) Schedule appointments 15 minutes apart, as many in a row as possible It might seem a little skimpy but 15 minutes is more than enough to look at a unit, even my 3 bedroom house people are only there about 15 minutes and if you have a no-show in the middle, it's not r...

I am a DIY landlord with only two properties (so far!) so I don't feel like I have luxury of a big team to market my properties but I think we all know that photos are what gets people to come and look at our rentals! Recently, I was marketing my second property and wasn't quite getting as much interest as I'd have liked; I lowered the price but what else could I do to spark more traffic? New photos! I didn't want to spring for professional photos because they're spendy and frankly, it seemed like work for me to line up a photographer who takes good real estate photos (it's a specific niche!) to spend my money on something and possibly wait several weeks to get them ready. Meanwhile, my property would be sitting on the market. I decided to buy a wide angle lense to make my camera phone photos look as good as possible. I did a little Amazon research and for less than $30 really upgraded my photos and with Prime shipping it was at my house the next day! New ...