As a professional property manager, I have had years of
experience in pricing rentals. The best
and most obvious way I do it is to look at what has rented in the local area
and how the property compares. I also look at how long the comparative
properties took to rent and the time of the year. In my experience, the Brevard county rental
market slows down around the holidays. So
a property that may rent for $1,000 in July or August, may only rent for $900 (or less)
in November. This may not always be the
case, but more often than not, it is.
I have had owners that have a rental price in their head,
that they must have. If this price is higher
than what the market reflects, it usually takes a lot longer to rent it. I have
had experience with owners that would not budge on their price, and had the
property sitting empty, with no rental income at all for several months. They
end up eventually lowering the price or negotiating down to the market price
anyway. They don’t realize that they lost more in those few months the property
did not rent, then they would have had they have rented it at the market price
to begin with.
I have also had owner that wanted to price their property so
high above the market price that I have had to decline listing the property. It
would have been a waste of everybody’s time and in most cases those are the
owners who would be calling and complaining that their property hasn’t rented. For
me it is just not worth it.
If a property is priced correctly, it should rent relatively
quickly and the owner should start receiving rental income in a shorter amount
of time.
