So, after all the work I did on Thursday and all the soreness I felt for two days afterwards, I only got three stinking callbacks for the ad I posted for the upstairs unit of property Alpha. Three! This was the lowest amount of callbacks I’ve ever had for an ad.
I didn’t understand it. Was it too early for people to be looking? That’s not true, because I got many more callbacks and appointments when I was trying to rent out the downstairs of property Chi at the beginning of June, which is also a three-bedroom. Did I overprice the apartment? That’s a possibility. My thought was that, if the going rent for a 3 bedroom is $700, then people will jump at the chance for an apartment that has utilities included just before the winter hits. The average heat bill for a 3 bedroom apartment in the winter is over $300. Was it the fact that I put it up for rent on a holiday? I put it up for rent on Veteran’s Day, but I don’t think that had anything to do with it. While it’s true that people are at home with their families on holidays, I would assume that it would give them more time and opportunity to look for places to rent.
The first callback didn’t show up for his 9am appointment on Sunday. I didn’t bother calling him back because it didn’t sound as if he was all that interested anyway when we talked on the phone. The second callback arrived for her 9:30 appointment 15 minutes late. She sent off a shit load of red flags when she was talking to me on the phone. She’s a single mother. Strike one. She has two teenage sons, one of whom is on SSI. Strike two. She loved the apartment, which I was still working on. The floors were still messy and the garbage had not been taken out. If she liked it, fine. But she LOVED it, and when a prospective tenant goes crazy over an unfinished apartment it’s a bad sign. It means that she’s not used to a clean apartment and is desperate to move out of her current place. She also wasn't asking the right questions. Strike three and she was out. I spent some time flirting back and forth with her 19-year-old daughter, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
Today I finish the apartment. I have a showing at 4pm for the third callback, but the woman also sounded like a loser so I’m not expecting much. Once she leaves, I go in there to mop the floors and apply the polyurethane, and then I’m done. On Tuesday I’ll take good pictures of the finished apartment. Early Wednesday morning I’ll repost the ad for $900. If I get the same lackluster response, I’ll be forced to lower my price in a different ad to $850 by Friday. I would hate for it to be rented out for the same price that Lex and the Indians were paying, as it would be a huge failure on my part. I don’t know why I’m not getting the results I want right now, but I’m willing to accept my errors in judgment, learn from my mistakes and move on—but I’m not sure what mistakes I made, aside from the repairs I neglected to make last year. I just want my $900 tenant by Friday.
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