9 Easy Ways To Get Rental Comps

Hey Moguls, JP Moses here…

Today we’re going to dig deep and find the answers to this important question:

How and why should you know the rental comparisons for your market area? And where can I find these comps?

Well, if you are a landlord:

Don’t you want to know if you're charging too much or too little?
Are you looking for some cold hard evidence for raising rents?
Or maybe you've got too many vacancies and not sure if your price point is to blame?

If you’re charging too much, you’re likely to be sitting with vacant rentals. If you don’t charge enough, you’re leaving profits on the table.

And if you are a wholesaler:

Aren’t you wondering what area rents are so you can give your landlord-buyers an accurate idea of their potential cash flow?

Sure you are, because it’s critical for your profit.

So today, I’m going to give ya a handy-dandy list of resources that can help you determine the rental comps in your market (because I’m that awesome)…

#1 Craigslist

We all know about Craigslist already. So if you aren’t using it as a daily resource for investing, you need to hop on the band wagon. Craigslist is the world’s largest classifieds site and has a huge volume of rental listings for almost every city and town imaginable.

#2 Rentometer

Rentometer.com is a website where you enter your rental amount and a meter tells you whether the price is low, high or average. For me, Rentometer tends to be bit on the high side for our area, but it’s a quick and easy check. The real problem is that it isn't very detailed. It doesn't account for the property size, garage or bathrooms. Good way to get an idea, though, and then, start grubbing through Craigslist.

#3 Rentbits

Rentbits.com offers marketing‚ tracking‚ reputation management and resident retention tools for thousands of advertisers and millions of renters across the United States. Lucky for us, they also have listings of available rentals for local areas and we can use this to get our rental comps.

#4 Ziply

Ziply.com focuses purely on classifieds, so it can be used as another helpful way to lookup your local rental comps and make your own analysis.

#5 Zillow Rentals

I think we are all familiar with Zillow. Not only is it a huge resource for homes for sale, but it also lists rentals for almost any local area. But again, be slightly wary of the results.

#6 Rentjungle

Rentjungle.com lets you enter specific rental features, such as how many bedrooms and bathrooms, and it gathers information from various rental websites to provide you with rental prices for similar homes in a specific local area. This site also has a cool trend feature that will give you the trending average rent price for any location.

#7 Rentals

Rentals.com is a site that advertises all types of rentals, including apartments, lofts and duplexes, and will email you leads for specific areas..

#8 Padmapper

Padmapper.com is for apartments only. You list the apartment criteria, and it sends you email alerts for properties available in you specified area. If you are a landlord of an apartment or apartment complex, this will let you know if you are on point with your rental prices.

#9 Your Local Section 8 Agency

Another great resource is the section 8 agency in your area where you can find standard rates. These tend to be above market, but it’ll still give you an idea.

BONUS (Just because I’m Awesome like that):

If you live in a rural area where online resources are nearly useless (or you are just old and behind on the times or just like to go one a drive now and then)... go old school!

Option 1: Call (i) all for rent signs in the area and (ii) all property management companies locally and find out what rents are, verbally. Do it for a few months and keep track of your results in a spreadsheet. Before long, you'll see trends and where the averages fall.

Option 2: Pull up a list of Non Owner occupied homes in the area. Just do a random search of 10 or so homes, then cross check them with property appraisers, along with similar homes from the White Pages. I would then call the people and tell them I am doing a rental survey and give them my information of what I found out. I actually get results doing this.

So that’s it, guys. I hope I gave you a new avenue or two to stay trendy with your rental comps.