Universal Ramblings

Whenever we’re looking to purchase or manage a rental property for a client one of the first places we go for rental rate recommendations is rentometer.com. After answering a few simple questions about your property rentometer compares your property against other rentals in the area and determines whether your rent is too high, too low or just right.

Rentometer is a good place to compare what rental rates are going for in the area that you have your property at. They mainly focus on apartments vs. rental of houses but at least this gives you an idea. I use this to check out rent comps for my condos and then also increase the rent 10%-20% if it’s a single family house and depending on it’s amenities.

It’s easy to use Rentometer. They only have four required fields:

1. “I am” field, you choose you are a landlord from a drop down menu.

2. “City & State, or Zip” field, you will need the zip. If you don’t know the zip code you can Google the address.

3. “Current Monthly Rent” field, type in what you are currently renting the property for.

4. “Bedrooms” field, use the drop down menu to select, Studio, 1-bedroom, etc.

5. Click Analyze My Apartment.

Rentometer will then tell you if your rent is too high, too low, of just about right. Then comes a sentence chock-full of valuable information: “About 11% listings are higher priced,” for example.

If you click “Explain” you get more insight. If you click “Try by Zip Code” Rentometer checks again results based on 1,000 properties within a few miles from your location.

Rentometer is FREE to use and it will give you a gauge if your rent is high, low, or just right. Remember, Rentometer auto calculates this information, so until you drive by these properties, there may be other amenities (location, view, etc.) that Rentometer does not take into account.

Keep in mind, if you are on the higher end of the rent gauge, it will take longer to rent out your property than if you are on the lower end. So the question is, how long do you want it vacant and how aggressive is your marketing? Rentometer will help you with your parameters to get started.