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You are here: Home / I am a Reluctant Landlord / Break the Myth: Price Your Rental with Whole Numbers

Break the Myth: Price Your Rental with Whole Numbers

April 17, 2015 by Elizabeth Bennett Colegrove Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links.

Prices Matter, Right? If you house is priced right, then it will rent? That’s the comment you hear often! As a landlord, that’s very true. If you price your rental according to its competition it will rent.

Okay so the next question I get is: HOW?

Price your Rental with whole numbers

How to Price Your Rental:

How do you price your rental? As I wrote here, establishing  a rental price is determined by the competition! I look at the comparable houses and what they are renting for on as many sites as possible.

Here’s the one thing I learned the HARD way! While price is important; the funny games don’t exist anymore!

Growing up I always heard “price it $1,799” or “$1,819 looks better than $1,820.” Here’s the thing, in my experience, the computer age has changed everything! While I can’t tell you that much about pre-computers and the internet (am I showing my age?) I can tell you from experience that people tend to put “whole” numbers into the search.

Take a step back and think about this question…

Say you are looking for a house on zillow. What number do you put in? $1725 or $1700? If your budget is $1700 do you go higher or right at budget?

Lesson Learned

I learned this lesson the hard way. I advertised my house for $1775. In a 3 week period we got 2 calls. So then we got a showing and they asked us if we would take $1700. I said yes and figured, well, I might as well change it for everyone to see and I changed the listing advertisement to reflect the new price of $1700. So the house was rented within 3 hours. I left the advertisement up for a couple days while I got everything figured out. Well guess what? I had 10+ inquiries in 48 hours!

Yes. $75 made that MUCH of a difference.

So over the years I have always through about this example. Here’s the thing that I have learned and carried.

People type in a”whole” number in to the calculator. This isn’t like the old days when your eyes could wonder to the next listing down in the classified ads in the newspaper (when was the last time you looked there!?!).  So if your rental price is over that  price ceiling then people won’t see your listing. It’s also why those extra costs really can be goblins and add no value.

Rounding up in whole numbers works out well too. I find that $1675 will get the same number of views as $1700. I haven’t found that $25 less will draw people in quicker.

So unless it is needed for accounting (i.e. you have multiple rentals and you know who paid by the amount) which, by the way, I don’t recommend- have different accounts for every house then you should keep your pricing simple and whole!

How do you price your homes? What have you experienced?

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Filed Under: I am a Reluctant Landlord, I am a Small Time Landlord, I am an Empire Builder, Self Management

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I love my family, my country and real estate. My goal is to retire early through frugal living and real estate investment. I am making great strides and want to share the information I've learned through the process. Read More...

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