How is an  150 hrs. of renting time needed  conventionally?

Traditionally, an average of 150 hours is likely spent in finding a tenant to fill the vacancy. This is to based on the following assumptions:

  • assume that  the landlord is having typical 3-5 year of renting experience, work full-time job while self-managing 1-3 rentals on side.
  • the average duration of 60 days, counting from the day when the rental is ready to be advertised to the public to the day when the qualified tenants have signed the lease
  • Over 2000 prospects have seen your ads, 200 replied with emails or text message, 20 viewed the home and 5 applied, with 1 qualified. 

As you may see, the purpose of the above assumptions is to make a simplified model for easy calculation/estimation, while still be able to reflect what is likely happening in the real world.  the real world scenarios into a 

  • Ads writing – counts as 2 hrs, based on the following:
    • less than 1 hr. for a “copy and paste” type. It is unlikely make a good impression and may lead to prolonged vacancy time. 
    • between 2-4 hrs. to write an ad that fits your home specific with basic information included.
    • it will take a lots of practice for an expert (good on writing and know the business inside out) to come up with a killer ad. This means a lots of more time for the average landlord in order to reach such level. 
    • In short, ~ 2 hr spending on writing is regarded a fair estimation. 
  • take pictures and videos – 10 hrs
    • Ideally, there should be 2 galleries with 20 individual pictures each. These pictures should allow the viewers easily image themself walking around the home, and also raise the feeling to see more, in person. 
    • The video should deliver a virtual walking through experience, with decent effort of editing (trim, lighting, music etc), before it is being uploaded to you-tube and ready for public.
    • On average – the above two exercises should take 10 hrs. for a decent result.  
  • Ad posting and reposting – On average, it may take 10 hrs.
    • many landlords want to save a few bucks by using these free websites, such as kijiji, Craglist, etc. In order to be on the top of the list, you have to reposting daily, a 10 mins estimation of daily spending on spending may lead to 600 mins, or 10 hrs tedious work in total. 
    • typically, it’s reasonable to allocate 10 hrs on the ad posting. 
  • Inquiry replies – is around 90 hrs. in total.
    • on average, you may spent 30 minutes/day on each activities, such as replying emails, texts, phone calls/screening, and social media messages. an estimate of 90 minutes per day in total of 50 days out of 60 days duration, this leads to 90 hrs in total. 
    • In carmap service, via automation, we have cut this overall time down to zero. 
    • (Without even considering the additional benefit of your sanity, just assuming even 30 hr saved, with $30.00 per hour will save you $900.00 minimum of the time value). 
  • showings – this may take on average 40 hrs.
    • 20 views in the overall time period of 60 days. It is likely you may spend time to double check, confirm, driving to/from, arrive earlier, get ready, wait, show, answer the questions, discuss the next steps, close and lock the door etc. Each showing on average may take 2 hrs more or less. or 40 hrs. in total. 
    • this has not included the time may be wasted on waiting, rescheduling, no showing, traffic delay etc. 
  • processing the application -it may take 2 hr./application on average. Or 10 hrs. in total. 
  • Lease approval/signing/money collection – we regard this process as 5 hrs in total. 

To add all the above together, we have a total 167 hrs. spent on average. by implying error of margin of 15%, a conservative estimation of 150 hrs. is derived as an estimation of the overall time spent to rent a rental home out by a landlord.