Yuriy 0:00

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the first 2026 piece of the Filler Landlord guy. I'm your host, Yuri scr Chenko, the guy with impossible last name. Just think of me as the filler landlord guy. Look, we're starting the year in a market that doesn't care about your feelings or about your mortgage payments. Right now, Philly is seeing property seat on the market for 60 to 70 days. Sometimes 80 plus days. If you're a landlord with a vacancy right now, you are not just losing the rent, you're losing sleep. The post and pre method on Zillow is dead to get a unit field in this market, you need to have right system. You need to know how to price based on data, not on your ego. And you need to know how to market like a pro. That's why I brought Cameron, the business development manager at Trust Art Realty. He is the guy on the front lines. He knows exactly what makes an tenant to sign a lease faster than 70 days

Speaker 1:01

We are here to share insights and experiences, not legal or accounting advice. Be sure to talk to your attorney, accountant, or professional advisor before making any decisions. Everyone's situation is different. Get the help that is right for you.

Yuriy 1:17

Hey Cameron, thank you for joining us. Can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about who you are, what you do, how did you get in real estate, and what is your experience in Phillyadelphia?

Cameron 1:28

Yeah, thank you Yuri, for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Cameron. I am the business development manager for Trust Art Realty. I've been in real estate myself for over six years and doing different roles from property management to leasing to a full-time realtor, to now being the business development manager for Trust Art Realty. So my main focus is on onboard onboarding new owners expanding the information of property management services that we have to offer to prospective owners and investors and landlords throughout the Phillyadelphia area.

Yuriy 2:03

Okay. Pleasure to have you. But I guess you didn't really have an option to not join this meeting, did you?

Cameron 2:09

Yeah,

Yuriy 2:10

I don't think so. I think it was on the calendar, Since you have a lot of experience in police and apartments in the city, and you've been named one of the top agents previously with the companies that you were working. So you, you saw a lot of people coming in and out and, you actually were on the ground, so you were doing showings. You showed the apartments, you spoke to potential tenants, you saw them, you know what they were looking for. You were screening them and talking to landlords about it as well. Right now we have. About 62 days average vacancy time in the whole city of Phillyadelphia. And in your daily work what are the biggest direct flags that you see that cause a property to sit maybe too long on the market, and why do you think this time is getting higher and higher now?

Cameron 3:01

That's a really good question, Yuri. For me, honestly, I think a lot of it, there's a lot of different factors that go into it, but the big one for me is the quality of the marketing. You do see sometimes where you do have a self-managed landlord or investor that only puts up or posts one or two photos and doesn't really. Include a description of the property and its features. Some things of not including a lot of those photos, along with not including any videos or any floor plans. Just, you wanna provide as much information as possible to the prospective tenant so they know what they're getting themselves into. But the lack of marketing has been something that I have seen. Which does leave the prospective tenant, very confused or a little hesitant to even reach out to to schedule that showing or reach out when it is available or when can I move in, things like that. So not having good quality marketing or any quality photos or videos or floor plans is a big deterrent which can cause increase in delay finding a a qualified tenant. Another thing would be similar to what I was talking about with the lack of marketing would be just like next steps. Where can they apply if they have a question, who can they contact? Not having that can also leave a tenant kind of wondering what are the next steps for me if I want interested in moving forward with the property? So it's always important to include that in a description at the end saying, Hey, if you have questions, reach out or send an email or give us a call. Or if you. Can also include the application link in the description, that would be great as well. But those are some factors. But the big thing for me would probably be the slow response time. So we do see a lot of potential renters that are interested in a property and they're looking at other property management companies or other self-managed, properties and they're reaching out, asking for questions. Hey, our pets are loud. What's the water bill per month? Is there central air? Things like that. And they don't hear back. Not hearing back is like a telltale sign that's like kind of a red flag and I don't really wanna rent from somewhere or work with a potential property manager or an owner that they can't answer a simple question when it's about their property and showing your interest as well. So not getting back to. Somebody can really be a big deterrent. And it's really important, the speed to the lead is very crucial in Phillyly just because of the amount of, competition in the area. There's so many row homes, new construction town homes, anything you could think of. I'm sure you could find it right across the street or a mile up the street, two miles up the street. There's just so many options, so it's really important to be in the best advocate for the property, be the best advocate. For the tenant and get back to them as soon as possible. Because the sooner you get back to them, the sooner they're gonna want to potentially work with you and schedule a tour and hopefully apply.

Yuriy 5:54

So what kind of things do you want to have in the listing description when you post a property? You already mentioned that if there is an application link, include that include the ways how they can contact you that you actually reply to them. And what is this time that you would say a potential tenant expect to get a response back from from the listing agent or from the owner who owns the apartment for rent?

Cameron 6:17

Yeah, those are good questions. I think description wise, you should definitely include. It's almost a time for you, an opportunity for you to brag about the property. So you can highlight all of its features, whether the kitchen was renovated last year or we just added a new roof, or there's central air now there's a finished basement outdoor space. Including those kind of key words is really important and it'll really in interest and attract the right tenant who are looking for those types of things, not including it. And then also not having good quality photos leaves the tenant in limbo. Unsure if the property has those features, and most likely they're not gonna really do too much of of the research and they'll most likely just move on to the next one. If it's a rental. Find something very similar. Yeah, so I, I think having those types of keywords is really important.

Yuriy 7:05

Okay. So for us as management company, we have multiple listings at any given moment, and we have a lot of different reports. We see where each lead is coming from, so we'll have a lot of tracking around that. So we definitely have more information that regular landlord would and for us, and not just for us, for our region in general. Zillow accounts for about 80% of all of the leads received. Comment for a property that we have for rent. That's including us listing every single property on ML S, which a single owner or landlord. If you're not licensed agent, you cannot do that unless if you use an agent or a property management company. Again, the being or having all of that, we still have about 80% of leads coming from Zillow. Where else would you recommend a landlord to list the property besides Zillow to get better applicants for

Cameron 7:59

property? Zillow does seem like it is the main source, but there are potential other options. Like us at Trust Start Realty, we do use social media. So using things like Facebook, LinkedIn, even TikTok those types of social media, third party sites. It can attract other potential clients that you didn't even think of who may not have been looking on the traditional Zillow sites that may have just been scrolling on their phone and randomly that popped up and, maybe it's not for them or maybe it's a family member or a friend that they can just share it with. And then that kind of just expands your exposure. It just really helps putting it out to as many markets and putting it out to as many channels as you can to try to help increase, the possibility of somebody moving into. To your par property.

Yuriy 8:45

So when you sit down with a new landlord how do you do a market analysis? What is the number one piece of data that they usually miss or ignore, but should be paying attention to?

Cameron 8:58

Yeah. For CMAs, I think the biggest number one factor I is the location. Phillyadelphia is very block by block and there's so many different zip codes, so many different neighborhoods. It really changes very quickly and people don't really realize that. So being very close to a border of a zip code that leads into another could potentially change the price point of your rental. The other thing too would be, just. Very traditional things like, number of bathrooms having an extra half bathroom. Some people realize, oh, they're looking at the number of just bedrooms or just the square footage, and you don't realize that maybe your subject property only has one bathroom, but he's looking at other ones that have one and a half or two bath, two full baths with two showers. So that. Can, fluctuate with the price and kind of decrease in value on the property that landlords don't really look into as, as high in detail. Some other things are just features. So in unit laundry, central air, finished, basement parking, all of those types of things are some key features that can really help boost your property. And then, it is really important to ensure that if your property has that, that if you're looking at a. A CMA that the other properties you can see that have closed at a certain price point, you can con, compare and contrast and see, oh, that one does have parking, so we can price it maybe a little bit similar. Oh, that one did have a renovated kitchen similar to ours. Things like that and as well as the square footage. Looking into all of those things are really important. And I think as a landlord, you don't want to go into it alone. You definitely wanna have somebody that can assist and help you out and guide you and give you the real numbers and ensure that you're also looking at updated information and recent information. You don't wanna look at comps that were over a year ago or two years ago, even though it was like right across the street. You wanna make sure it's at least within about five to six months max. So you wanna make sure it's all recent. So it's pretty up to date with the market.

Yuriy 10:52

Yeah, especially if you were watching the market for the last year, you saw that we, instead of having ran hikes, we have ran flatten, we're actually going down in a lot of different areas of Phillyadelphia. And talking about this different features, as you mentioned in unit laundry, parking, finished basements, or additional half baths. Does it increase your rent amount or it reduces the time on the market? How? How would you go about it? Would you increase the price? If, let's say you have a similar property across the street that's a three bedroom, one bath, and you have an extra bathroom would you keep the same price just to be able to attract more potential tenants and rent it faster, or you would increase the price and. Maybe potentially increase the time on the market with that? What? What would be your suggestion here?

Cameron 11:46

I would always recommend to pricing it accurately. I think it's always in the owner's best interest to find tenants as soon as possible. You don't want a property sitting vacant. You don't know what any deferred maintenance could be going on. You don't want know anything that could be going on in terms of, if you have a mortgage as well. So you could be losing money if you haven't paid off on your investment in full. So even though it does. Look like a nice potential to price it a little bit higher than the one across the street, even though it is pretty much the same, there's not much of a difference. Pricing it accurately, in my opinion, is always the best route to go. You wanna stay competitive with the market. Always, I always tell owners that you can price it higher if you want, but ultimately that it's your loss in a way that you're losing time on the market. All of those prospective renters that, have a budget of a hundred dollars less than what the market price it or what the property is rented for, they're just gonna walk right past it. They're not even gonna schedule a showing because it's out of their budget. And, that's not even including utilities, a potential pet fee. Moving costs, things like that. So pricing it accurately is always, in my opinion the better way to go. The other thing too is when it is a higher market or higher demand in the spring and summer months, if you're pricing it more competitively, you may even get yourself in a bidding war where you may have, two tenants that are really interested in the property and one's willing to, instead of a 12 year lease, be willing. 12 month lease, be willing to sign for a 24 month lease or maybe even pay an extra 50 to a hundred dollars a month. So the benefit would, in my opinion, would be to always try to price it as accurately as possible. Unless you have the big bucks and are willing to let it sit for an extra three months and you don't care. But if you want somebody in there. As soon as possible to reduce vacancy, I would always recommend pricing it accurately rather than higher.

Yuriy 13:43

How me as a landlord how can I go and do market analysis myself or how can I figure out what is my market rent right now? So let's say I have this three bedroom house that I had rented. So for, I don't know, last six years now it's vacant. I just did turnover. It's ready to go. And I have no idea what to rent it for. U utilize a landlord. I want to get as much as possible. And I know that interest rate rates are crazy. My mortgage payments are crazy. Insurance go up. Doesn't mean that I would just take my payment for mortgage insurance and whatever else expenses I have, and that's going to be my minimum base for the rent, plus, I don't know, $50 to have on top on that, or how would I determine that? How do I find that number?

Cameron 14:32

Yeah. It's always in my advice, I would say to, reach out to a professional, reach out to a realtor. You can't always trust the estimates. The rent's estimates on Zillow and apartments.com, those are not always accurate and sometimes they're priced way higher. Investors, landlords do get a little bit more excited and once they see that number and they haven't really run. Or ran the comps that a realtor would do in the past six months and see, within a mile or two mile radius, how many homes very similar to that. What are they actually renting for? How long did they take to get rented? So you definitely wanna, you get in contact with somebody that you know you can trust that is familiar with the market especially with the area has experience, dealing with renters in that area. Know what they're looking for. Be realistic with the owner and letting them know, Hey, you're 200, $300 over what realistically the past six months of comps have showed. You can try for that that higher price, most likely it will take a little bit longer to find somebody. Yeah.

Speaker 2 15:37

I,

Cameron 15:38

so I always recommend finding somebody that you can trust and ask them that hopefully is a realtor can run those numbers, sit down with you and, have an honest conversation with you about it.

Yuriy 15:48

How do you find that trusted realtor or. Real estate agent or a property management company or whoever can give you that information. How do you find them? You mentioned something which is resonates with me a lot, is that you need to have somebody who knows the area and knows the tenant. So if somebody is working in center City only and you asking them about a tenant in Parkwood, they would have no idea what the tenant base like, what the properties look like how long it takes to rent it, or what kind of, even what kind of listing you need to have. Or things like, do you need to have the unit staged for the pictures, or you can have AI staging done, or you don't need to have any staging. So how do we find that? Person who can help you in specific area that you're looking at.

Cameron 16:34

Yeah, I think it's really good for an owner or an investor to do their due diligence and, do the research specifically by their neighborhood or by their zip code. Looking for a trusted realtor or property manager who has done rental sales or, dealt with actual clients and they have the proof for it. So I think it's beneficial to, interview. Your property manager or your realtor before, you just signed that agreement. Someone that you know has experience in that local area because, like you mentioned and what I mentioned before, every zip code in Phillyly is very different. Center City is very different to Parkwood, like you mentioned Summerton, Bustleton, all of those areas compared to, south Phillyly or West Phillyly. You want to, you definitely want to have somebody in your corner that has. Done those types of deals in those areas. And is familiar, with the streets, with the schools nearby, with the parks. Knowing what the potential prospective renter wants and being realistic and what the potential price point is is really beneficial and can always, like I mentioned, help in the long run so you're not having a property sit vacant for a really long time.

Yuriy 17:42

What are your thoughts on the listing price in general? Is it better to list at the higher end and test the market for a couple weeks and then just adjust the pricing accordingly? Or it's better to price accurately from D one and put it on the market to have a transit faster?

Cameron 17:59

Yeah. I, like I said before, I think it's always beneficial to price accurately. You want to increase competition, you're not really gonna get as much competition with a higher price point. The other thing too is if you as the investor, have a mortgage on the property, you have a monthly payment that you gotta pay. If you have it priced higher, hoping that oh, or I'm gonna re, I'm gonna offset my mortgage payment if I get a higher. Higher price, but that's all good and fair. But you actually have to have a tenant in the property that's gonna pay that higher price every single month on time. So I think it's always beneficial to, to price accurately with. The market with the area, run the comps within the past five to six months. And be realistic. And, you want somebody in there that's gonna be responsive responsible with the property, keep it in good condition, pay on time. You want to price it fairly, you don't want to price it, out of the wazoo and, you're just hoping. Some rich, successful doctor, whoever, is just gonna find it and be willing to pay that. So I, I think it's always beneficial to price accurately especially when, the spring summer rolls around, like I said before, when it is more competitive, more leases are ending in that timeframe. If you are pricing accurately, that's gonna increase your demand. Hopefully, you will find somebody within that, for example, that $1,500 budget, instead of you trying to price it at 1795 when you know that's not realistic and not within comps. So to reduce vacancy reduce the headache and stress, I always say to price accurately unless you know you are. You have the deep pockets and you're, you're okay with it sitting vacant for a while. But especially with the timing of year right now. And like we mentioned earlier in the the call that, it's been, it's about 62 days average on market. To find a tenant, so that's, with pricing it accurately, you're gonna be at six months, or sorry, at 60 dates. If you aren't pricing it accurately, you're already gonna be most likely above 60 days. And, you don't wanna be in the 90 day to a hundred plus days, and especially if you have a mortgage, you're gonna be in a big hole. You want to price accurately.

Yuriy 20:04

And right now as you say, if you on average have two months vacancies that you have to plan for, and if you price a hundred dollars more and that adds additional months on the market, that's just gonna kill you. It's, perplexing for me. Sometimes when I talk to landlords or I listen to some podcast or somebody is posting some post that it's better to have it on the higher end and see how it goes. Maybe you get lucky and maybe you're able to rent it out or maybe, Hey, I just upgraded my kitchen, so now I'm gonna get $200 more. It doesn't work that way all the time. It depends on the market. And with our current market, I would say you, you need to be as aggressive as present as you can. And a simple explanation from you would be if your rent is over $1,200 a month, which is most of the rents would be over $1,200 a month, just divide that by 12 months, and that is at least a hundred dollars that you're losing each month for the property to not being rented. So if your property should be rented at $1,200 and you listed at $1,300 and it takes an additional month sitting on the market. It's exactly the same as if you were to rent it a month sooner for 1200.

Cameron 21:27

I agree with you completely. I think it's always good to price aggressively. You want to create the sense of competition for the property. It's not always great when, I'm informing an owner or a landlord that, the property's been on the market for 30 days and it's overpriced. We've only had one showing. And they're like, oh, we want to continue with this price. We're probably 30 days from now gonna be in the same position, compared to somebody else where it's price accurately. I can report back to them in two weeks and say, Hey, we. We already have applications. We already had 10, 10 showings at this point. So it's always good to, increase the volume, want to give as many people the chance to see the property. You wanna price it accurately to give them that chance. And more, more often than not, you will find a qualified tenant who will end up applying.

Yuriy 22:12

Yeah. And it's, again, it's always so perplexing for me when landlords do not want to reduce, they just want to keep the property on the market as long as possible for the price that they hoping to get. And in my mind, the only reason why you would wanna do it, if you want to get some kind of loan on the property or mortgage where it's, depending on the rent amount that you're getting from a property, if you get in below a certain amount of rent, maybe you will not be able to get that loan. Maybe in that case it makes sense, but again, if the property is sitting in the market for a few months and you cannot get that loan anyway, does it make sense? Probably not. Yeah. And with all of this, we are in a very complicated market right now. We have a lot of new inventory on the market. We have all of this new built apartment complexes that offer a lot of amenities. We have all of this houses that, that is interesting now that people were selling them, that they were not able to sell them at the price that they wanted to get, and now they're taking them off the market for sale and they put them on the market to rent. So with all of this like influx of new units on the market almost in every single area of the city, how do you see, how have tenants expectations also changed? What do they expect to see in the property? What are they looking for or what kind of property conditions should be to be able to attract the best tenant?

Cameron 23:42

It really also does depend on the area the location, the zip code, all that stuff. But honestly, ever since COVID, people want to. Use their home as their all-inclusive resort. They want to use it for their office, they want to use it for their gym, they want to use it for storage. They're looking for everything. So that is why, a lot of these landlords and investors are investing in these highrise complexes and are gonna offer, a rooftop deck. There's gonna be a convenience store on the first floor, and there's gonna be a gym extra storage, there's gonna be parking. All of those things, nowadays are a lot of things that people are looking for as a renter. More so I would say like younger professionals, younger couples, younger families. But other than like the amenities, I would say, people are looking for, especially younger families, are looking for the in-unit laundry. They are looking for central air updated kitchen, potentially an outdoor space if they have pets. The other thing too for me that I've seen a lot is storage. A lot of people have a lot of things and. Other than, they're looking at the kitchen, they're looking at the bedrooms, they're also really looking at the closet space. How am I gonna fit all of my clothes in here? How am I gonna fit my shoes in here? How am I gonna fit my coats in here? So I have in the past have had people pass on properties just because it didn't have closet space. So having storage for me is something that I. In my own house I value as well. You don't wanna rent an additional storage locker or stor storage unit at a third party site and have to drive somewhere to, to gather your belongings. So especially if it's like a either a condo or even just a single family home if you're developing or, doing a new construction, you want to ensure that it does have good closet space in each of the bedrooms. You wanna have ensure it has a coat closet or some sort of additional storage space in the basement as well. Just because, like I mentioned, people wanna ensure that they can do pretty much everything in their home nowadays. They wanna ensure that they can work from home. They want to ensure that they can potentially get a workout in from home. They wanna ensure they can read a book outside, if possible. All of those things. So I think it's really important to look out for those if you are considering increasing your rental price points or, constructing a new property. But I would say that storage is really important. And people will, either move forward with that property because of that, or pass on it because it doesn't have it

Yuriy 26:07

Having the storage or adding the storage units or closets to the property, it's not that easy, right? You may want to do it if you do a rehab or if you do a new construction. But is there something that the regular landlord who just has a regular three one. Town home in Phillyly, is there something that they can do at the time? Let's say right now where in January, 2026 I have a tenant moving out from my regular row home. What can I do to make sure that I market this? Home better to the potential tenants. Obviously I cannot build closets in it. It's just, it's impossible. It's possible if I want to spend a lot of money. But in general, it's not something that I would do.

Cameron 26:51

Even if, it doesn't have, it's not updated or, a lot of listings I have seen personally is, it could be like an older row home, which most likely does have an unfinished basement and they don't include that photo. In the listing because, it's unfinished and they don't think it's that nice. And then in, in the description, they may not include it either, but I would recommend, if you don't have, obviously the capacity to, build an extra storage closet or things like that to ensure that you are including, that unfinished basement. Or that finished basement in the listing photos. So tenants can say, oh, wow, it may not have a lot of closets, but, I can store a lot of my belongings season out seasonally in, in the basement. Include that, there is ample storage in the listing description as well. Having those things, it doesn't really take much effort, just one extra click of a camera and one extra sentence. You have to type in your listing description. But having those things, even though it may not be the most pretty and fancy it's not finished, who cares? People wanna see that they can still have that option, to store stuff. So I would recommend ensuring, you include that in the listing description as well as added in your photography or have your photographer make sure that they get down there to take that photo too.

Yuriy 28:06

Talking about pictures for the listing. So I often see that landlords post just couple pictures or just an exterior picture or a picture of, I don't know, a wall from a house and if not much else. What kind of pictures would you recommend a landlord to post? Like of every room or every bedroom or just kitchen, A bathroom. What type of pictures and, how those should look like.

Cameron 28:34

Yeah. You always want to have quality photos. You don't want any of those blurry photos where like your thumb is covering the camera or you're taking the pictures yourself and you're in the mirror and they can see you in the mirror. I've seen all of those on Zillow. You wanna make sure it's professional and quality. Obviously if you don't have the marketing costs. Or the budget to, hire a professional photographer. You can use, a lot of these phones nowadays are very high quality, so you can use your smartphone use a tripod and hold it up and, get the right angle and do those types of things if you don't have the budget. But first options would probably be to, hire a photographer or, get a nice camera and figure out how to do it yourself or use your smartphone. But in terms of like the number of photos or where to take the photos, I would always recommend, you want the exterior, you want to see what it looks like out front. And you almost want to take the photos as if you're like walking through the home yourself. So you know, usually, when you first walk in you'll see the foyer or the living room kitchen. You want multiple photos of both of those. If it has an updated kitchen, you wanna ensure, it has the, you should take the photo of the kitchen island and the newer appliances, the dishwasher if it also has a backyard or any type of outdoor space, you do want to include that as well. That's a very big plus, especially these days, people wanna have their own private outdoor space. And then, like I mentioned just now, you want to add the basement photos as well. If you're able to organize it a little bit or sweep it up, clean it up, if it's unfinished, that'll really help as well. Tenants want to see, that they have the storage and the space that they need to fit all of their belongings. Bathroom pictures. You only probably need one or two. If there's multiple bathrooms, you want to just make sure you have photos of all of the bathrooms, half bath or full bathroom, and then bedrooms. I would say one or two. The other thing that I always recommend to include if it does have laundry, make sure you're taking the photo of the laundry. That is probably like one of the top questions tenants or prospective tenants will ask if it's not there. So you know, you don't want to, just. Keep answering the same question over and over again. Why not just include it and include it in the description so tenants know, Hey, I see the photo of the laundry. I see it's in the description as well. That checks off what I'm looking for. Yeah I think those are some things that are really important. Tenants just want to see, pictures that are very similar to what they would hopefully also see. In person when they see the property, they wanna make sure it's pretty similar. They don't want to be surprised by anything. They want to make sure that it's pretty accurate. So I would recommend high quality photos. Smartphone if you don't have the budget camera, if you do, or hire for photographer, either or. But there are multiple options, you can take to, to ensure you have professional high quality photos.

Yuriy 31:19

You mentioned something when you take pictures for the listing, just imagine that you are walking through with somebody through the house and snap a picture of every space that you have, but at the same time, you want to have them look a little bit more professional than. When you just do a selfie with a window in the background or something? Yeah,

Cameron 31:38

exactly.

Yuriy 31:39

And yes, you're right. Most of our modern cell phones, they have great cameras. You can do a lot of different pictures and also videos. I would not recommend doing white lens pictures that people do sometimes for smaller spaces like bathrooms or something else. That gets very confusing for tenants when they look at those pictures because they. Look like it's a big space, but it's a little corner closet or something. So I would avoid those as well. But how does having a video walkthrough changing the listing? Or does it help or what was on that?

Cameron 32:17

I think the video walkthrough is just like a sneak peek or like a preview. So you know, the tenants can. Visually see what the property looks like as if they were, at the tour. So it gets them. Excited about the property. They can, like I mentioned, you want the media and the marketing to tell a story about the property. You wanna walk through it. Envision yourself, envision, putting the furniture there. You wanna envision putting the sofa there. You wanna make sure, everything fits. So having the walkthrough, I think is just like an extra bonus. And it can help, answer some questions that. Tenants may already reach out to you and they may have watched the walkthrough and you know they can, oh, now it does. I can see that it does have in unit laundry once I go down the basement in the walkthrough, or, oh, I can see that it does have a little small backyard and I can fit our outdoor or outdoor couch there. Things like that. You just want, people to be as prepared as possible and you don't wanna hide anything. You don't want to, for them to be surprised on the tour and they're like, oh, I didn't know that was there, or I didn't realize that wasn't there. Yeah, so I, I think just having all that there ensures that, the tenant or prospective tenant is serious about moving forward. I think it also mitigates any people from just window shopping, once they physically are not physically once they're. Virtually seeing the walkthrough and, seeing the photos. And then from there they can see what the property really looks like. More often than not they're pretty serious and they wanna schedule a tour and they wanna move forward. So just having all of that extra information and those extra resources can really help and hopefully help you find a qualified tenant.

Yuriy 33:50

So at what point would you say a DIY landlord should stop trying to do their own leasing and bring in a professional? That can be a leasing agent or that can be a property management company. Do they need to test it out for a month themselves and if there is no luck where they cannot get a, would qualify a tenant, then they can engage with somebody? Or what is your take on that?

Cameron 34:17

Yeah I think it's probably beneficial to reach out to a professional from day one. And especially also if you are doing this as like a side hustle or, you already have a full-time job or have a family or kids once you do list that property it does start to get very busy and you do want to have somebody that you can trust to help you out with this. So someone like us at Trust Art Realty, we can step in. Give you, get you the comps, get you the CMA get your property leased and managed as soon as possible. The only way I would say is to not get somebody involved like us is, if you have somebody that you knew, like it's, oh, my brother Jimmy is gonna move in or, a colleague or whatever, that's, you, that's totally fine. But to reduce vacancy. Reduced days on market you really want to have somebody that knows the process. Also that knows the process locally in Phillyadelphia understands what is needed to successfully rent your property. You don't want to do it alone thinking, you, you get, you checked all of your boxes when you know things randomly can happen. So I think it's always beneficial to, to get in contact with a professional as soon as possible. 'Cause you don't want the property to sit vacant and that can always lose you money. So that's no fun for anybody.

Yuriy 35:37

What is the difference between a listing agent or realtor and a property management?

Cameron 35:44

Yeah, so leasing agent or realtor, they're most likely just gonna help you find the tenant. Handle the showings. And then once the tenant's placed, their jobs is done and they're most likely just gonna move on to the next client. Compared to property management like us at Trust Art Realty we are full service. So we will handle, the front end of doing the marketing and the showings. We have a great leasing team. We will do the tenant screening. And the good thing about us is, once you have that tenant that is placed, we will continue to manage the property. Handling all day-to-day communication with the tenant, rent, collection, maintenance all those things, we will handle for the owner and it's very beneficial. Like I mentioned, people could have full-time, other full-time jobs family. Children. It's a headache. On top of that, you have a tenant reaching out to you at two in the morning about some leak or they're telling you. They're late on rent for another week. And you still gotta go to, to work the next day. Having somebody like a professional property manager, like trust start Realty is pretty important in my opinion. Those are the differences. But if you're looking for full service property management. Compared to just finding a tenant, it, it depends on your, what you're looking for. Whereas, like I said, a leasing agent realtor is just gonna handle the front end and then just move on to the next person compared to a full service property management team.

Yuriy 37:07

I would also say that if you are going with a listen agent to list your property to show it screen tenants, you need to make sure that they know what they are doing. That it's not just a regular agent who just decided to have this small site hassle of listing your house and getting a quick buck for it. They need to understand all of the rules and regulations. They need to understand all the landlord tenant laws in city of Phillyadelphia because if they're doing something incorrectly, you as a landlords can get in trouble for that. And even if they're licensed agent, it doesn't mean that they know what they're doing. They may be selling houses all the time, but they may have no idea how to lease a house. They may not know what kind of documents you need to sign to lease a house. So if you go in with an agent, just. Make sure that you do your research and that the person that you select actually is knowledgeable and they know what they're doing on the market. So say finally, I have my property listed. It's everywhere. It's on Zillow, it's on social media. I have my video walkthrough. I took great pictures with my cell phone. Can you just share what is your way of converting leads into a lease?

Cameron 38:21

I think the big thing is the speed to the lead. So you wanna respond to the lead their question or whether they're trying to schedule a tour. You want all of that happen. Ideally, as soon as possible within the first hour, two hours of when they reached out, you want to get back to them that same day no matter what. Because most likely somebody that is looking, they're, they're looking at multiple other rental properties and other opportunities. So if you don't get back to them. They're most likely moving on to their next option. But that would be the number one, the speed to the lead. Make sure you're getting back to them as soon as possible. Conducting the tour, answering any questions that they have. Screening the tenant would be the next step. Once you do encourage them to apply and you get that application, screening them hopefully, approving them if they are quality in terms of, credit income, all of those good things. And then next would be signing the lease, collecting, moving funds, and starting the process all over again. So it really is like a, it's a cycle. You want to respond to the tenant as soon as, or prospective tenant as soon as possible. Ensure you're answering all those questions. See if there's anything that's holding them back from applying. See if there's anything that we can do, to try to help them out. Get the application, screen the app, screen the applicant collect the move in funds, sign the lease, and, repeat the cycle over again. So it's a pretty tried and true process. We've been doing it for a pretty long time,

Yuriy 39:43

yeah. Yeah. Especially the process of screening tenants can get complicated and it's also can can be very highly regulated in city of Phillyadelphia. So you need to make sure that you understand how you can and cannot screen tenants. And we actually have a piece on this, a few months back. So if you want to, you can go and check it out. But if a landlord has a vacant unit right now what is the single most effective thing that they can do to get it rented faster?

Cameron 40:15

I think the best option would be is, to Mark, make sure you're marketing it on all sites. Obviously it will go on Zillow and it'll syndicate to all the other third parties. But it's beneficial, like we have mentioned throughout the conversation, is to get in touch with the professional. You want to ensure that it is on the MLS as well. A lot of people do use a realtor. Even for just renting a property, you'd be surprised. There are a lot of leasing agents that do focus just on rentals, so you want to ensure that the property is listed on the MLS. And like we did mention before, you do also want to ensure it is on social media as well just to expand it, its exposure. But yeah, I would say that. Marketing wise, those are really good things. But pricing wise, like we have mentioned, pretty much, it's like the theme of the call is to price accurately. You don't want the property to be sitting vacant. If you have a mortgage, you are gonna be losing money on the property if you're trying to get that certain price point that is already. Above the market rate. So pricing it accurately getting good marketing and hiring a professional is probably like the three top things I could probably recommend. But doing all those things doesn't necessarily guarantee you're gonna get somebody right away. But the other thing that's really important is the speed to the lead. With the competition in Phillyadelphia. 60 plus days on market right now. You can imagine, you can get excited that you get a lead. That doesn't necessarily mean that lead's gonna turn into a lease. You just really need to stay on top of them. It gets very competitive, especially this time of year because it is a little bit slower. If you do get that lead, you want to make sure you're holding onto them and trying to get them into one of your properties before they you lose them or if you don't respond because they're gonna be moving on to the next option. Given the amount of inventory in the area.

Yuriy 42:06

Cameron, thank you for all of this great information. Hopefully it's helping somebody out there trying to render their property, but if somebody wants to reach out to you or what is the best way to find you,

Cameron 42:18

I appreciate it, Erie, but I would say best way to get in contact, you can call me, I can be reached at 2 6 7 4 6 5 6 5. Six four. The other thing would be also my emailCameron@trustartrealty.com. You can also check out our website, trust art realty.com. We have a bunch of reviews, on our website owner testimonials full links to our services and all the pricing and all the good things that we have to offer

Yuriy 42:46

Sounds good. Thank you, Cameron. Thanks Uri. All right. That's a wrap on our today's pizza. If you're listening to this and your property is still sitting vacant, you have no excuses left. Cameron gave you the blueprint. Check your pricing, fix your photos, and tighten up your follow up. If you're tired of chasing tenants and you want a team that already have systems dialed in, reach out to Cameron. At Trust Hire, he's going to help you. His contact information is below. You can also go to trust hire realty.com and just click schedule Consultation on top. It is free. You can get your market analysis for your property, and you don't need to pay anything for it. As always, keep your properties clean, your tenants screened, and your numbers tight. I'm Yuri Chenko, and this is the Philly Landlord guy. I'll catch you on the next

Speaker 2 43:37

one.