RentoMeter
To find a maximum rent to charge for your property without losing the best possible long-term tenants is a tricky proposition!
You could hire an experience los gatos property manager, but what if there were other resources!? What if there was a Rent Calculator that displayed the range of rents that nearby Los Gatos homes were fetching!?
Well, there is such a website called RentoMeter.com which allows you to test drive your desired rent for your Los Gatos property.
The site allows you to input you to input your property info below:
1) Property Address
2) Number of Bedrooms
3) Expected or Desired Rent
Then the site display a round dial (seen in the image above) which shows where you expected rent ranks among the nearby properties. The Site uses a 0.6 mile radius to find similar homes using only the bedrooms to find the match!
The challenge with the site is that there is no other input fields besides the one’s listed above that might impact a potential tenants interest in paying more for the property. For instance, if you had pool, extra storage, detached studio that could be valuable to tenants, there is no way to adjust for them using this application.
The other problem with the pricing model here is that caps the maximum number of bedrooms at 6 which means it’s not suitable for pricing multi-family or much larger homes that have more than 6 bedrooms. Finally, the site should include the number of bathrooms which in our opinion impacts the decision of tenants on the value for rent.
We tested the site with one of Rental properties in San Jose that we manage. We use $5,500 rent for desired Rent and got the following results:
- 60 6-bedroom rentals
- …in a 7.95 mile radius.
- Median rent: $4500
- Average rent: $4837
- 20th / 80th percentile: $2990/ $6375
- 10th / 90th percentile: $2698 / $7925
This is very good start for Landlord and property managers who might need to do a quick rental survey when they are assigned a new property. We do much more extensive Property Profile using County records which includes a Rental Market survey as well.
As you can see from the red dial, the 90th percentile of the rent is $7,925 but the maximum rent is shown as $9,750 but it’s well in the Red which might not be a wise marketing strategy for your rental.
What do you use to make your final decision on the rent?! Let us know.
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