Getting Social with Millennial Tenants
Real Estate, and particularly rental house, has been a little slow to the digital revolution and social media but the reality is that social media is playing an even greater part of marketing and working with tenants during their tenancy.
Buildium’s recent renter’s survey reported that renters under 30 would be comfortable interacting with their landlord or property management company on Facebook or another social media platform. In rental housing, it’s time to get social!
When it comes to marketing your listing, familiar sites like Zillow, Hotpads, Trulia, and Rent.com are popular but have you considered advertising on Facebook? Facebook ads aren’t just for the latest product or fashion trend. They can also target people within 5 miles of your property and help guide them to your rental. It can also be helpful to setup a Facebook page for your building (even a single family home!) It helps you build up reviews, it makes your property searchable on Facebook, and you can use it to interact with your tenants. Tenants can send you messages through the page in regards to any number of issues or problems and you can respond within the app. This can be a better solution than interacting with your tenants on your personal page amongst your friends and family!
Another platform that can be quite popular for this Twitter. Having a building twitter page for people to make maintenance requests or interact with you can be a great solution to a flurry of texts, emails, or phone calls. You can post your listings from popular sites and expose them to a different audience than might otherwise have clicked on your listing. If you are getting ready to expand your portfolio, twitter is a great place to connect with others and find a great deal.
The best part about leveraging these platforms is two-fold, you can share great updates from other rental housing industry pages (like RHAWA) while making your voice heard in your local government, and you can use your existing and past tenants to reach new tenants and possibly new business opportunities in the future. Having a good social reach is essential. The younger generation doesn’t engage with traditional media outlets and things like email are even falling out of use in favor of messaging apps. This means that to find new tenants and to interact with your younger tenants requires a change in communication tactics.
Let’s get social!