Marketing a Rental While It Is Still Occupied

Las Vegas Rental Marketing Guide › Listing and leasing

Pre-Marketing an Occupied Las Vegas Rental

The cheapest vacancy is the one you planned for while the rent was still coming in

Most vacancy is not caused by a weak market. It is caused by an owner who starts marketing the day the tenant hands back the keys. Everything that could have happened in the last month or two of the lease — the price check, the photos, the listing, the first showings — happens instead while the property earns nothing.

Pre-marketing an occupied home moves that work earlier. It also brings rules the vacant-home playbook does not have, because someone still lives there.

Decide on the Renewal First

Before any listing goes up, settle whether you are offering the current tenant a renewal. Marketing a home whose tenant was expecting to stay is a fast way to lose a good tenant and gain a vacancy you did not need.

• Raising the rent at renewal? In Nevada, NRS 118A.300 requires at least 60 days’ written notice of a rent increase (30 days if the tenancy is periodic and shorter than a month). Work backwards from the lease end date so the notice goes out in time.
• Ask the tenant early. A clear answer two to three months out gives you room to plan either outcome.
• Get the answer in writing. A verbal “we’re probably leaving” is not a date you can market against.

Our page on rent increase notice in Nevada covers the renewal side in full.

Entry for Showings: Nevada’s Notice Rule

Under NRS 118A.330, a tenant may not unreasonably withhold consent for the landlord to enter and show the home to prospective tenants. In return, except in an emergency, the landlord must give at least 24 hours’ notice and enter only at reasonable times during normal business hours, unless the tenant expressly agrees to shorter notice or a different time for that particular entry. The same section prohibits abusing the right of access or using it to harass the tenant.

• Give notice for each showing, in writing, with the time.
• Batch showings into a few set windows each week rather than asking for access every day.
• Check the lease. A clause describing access for showings near the end of the term sets expectations from move-in.
• Respect the tenant’s belongings and privacy. No photographing personal items, no opening drawers, no showings without someone accompanying the visitor.

Keep the Current Tenant on Side

Showings succeed or fail on the tenant’s cooperation. A home shown with beds unmade and a dog barking behind a door looks nothing like its listing. Be explicit about what you are asking, keep showings to the agreed windows, and thank them. A tenant who leaves on good terms also tends to leave the property in better condition, which speaks directly to the next point.

Photos: Archive Versus Current

You cannot usually photograph a lived-in home the way you would a clean, empty one. Two options:

• Use archive photos from the last vacancy, but only if the home still looks like them. Same paint, same flooring, same landscaping. Disclose any material change.
• Shoot exteriors and the yard now and replace interior images after move-out and the make-ready.

Photos of someone else’s furniture, family pictures or clutter are both a privacy problem and poor marketing. Our guide to rental listing photos has the shot list for the reshoot.

Plan the Gap Between Tenancies

The aim is a short, deliberate gap between move-out and the next move-in, not zero. The departing tenant’s move-out inspection, any repairs, the cleaning and rekeying all have to fit in it.

• Set the next tenant’s move-in date only once you know what the make-ready involves.
• Schedule vendors before the move-out date, not after.
• Run the move-out inspection against the move-in report; see move-in and move-out inspections.
• If the departing tenant’s date slips, tell the incoming applicant immediately.

The work for that window is on our rent-ready checklist.

How We Handle It

For the properties we manage, the standard lease term is twelve months, which gives us a known date to plan the next lease-up around. A dedicated leasing specialist coordinates showings with the current tenant, markets the home on the popular rental sites, including Zillow and Trulia, and answers renters’ questions by phone, email and text, including nights and weekends. See our rental property marketing page.

Next in the Guide

See how showings work once the home is empty in rental showings in Las Vegas, and check timing against the best time to list a rental. Before the renewal conversation, a free rental analysis tells you what the home should rent for now.