How to Market a Rental So the Right Tenants Apply

Most landlord advice starts at screening. That is the wrong starting point, because screening can only choose from the people who applied, and what determines who applies is the marketing.

A vague, badly photographed, evasive listing attracts applicants who are not being selective either. You then screen a poor pool carefully and pick the best of it, which is a different thing from a good outcome.

This is about the earlier lever.

Specificity Is a Filter, Not a Deterrent

The instinct is to keep a listing broad so as not to put anyone off. It works against you.

A listing that says everything relevant lets people who would not suit the property screen themselves out before applying. That is the entire objective. You want a smaller pool of people who read the terms and still want it, not a large pool of people who did not read anything.

Say all of this, plainly:

• What the property actually is — type, bedrooms, approximate size, which floor, whether it is a suite within a house
• What is included in the rent, and what is not. Utilities are the most common source of later disputes
• Parking: how many spaces, where, whether it is plugged in
• Laundry: in unit, shared, or none. Do not leave this to be discovered
• Pets, and if allowed, what kind and how many
• Smoking
• The lease term you are looking for
• Availability date
• Rent, and the security deposit position

Ambiguity in any of those produces both worse applicants and worse tenancies. The person who applies without knowing whether pets are allowed is going to ask you about their dog after signing.

Photographs Do More Work Than the Text

People decide whether to enquire from the photographs. Almost nobody reads a listing they were not already interested in.

Clean first. Then photograph. This sounds obvious and it is skipped constantly.

Shoot in daylight, with the lights on and the blinds open. A dark phone snap of a cluttered room signals a property that is not looked after — and that signal attracts applicants who correctly infer they will not be held to much of a standard either.

Photograph every room, including the ordinary ones. A listing showing only the renovated kitchen and nothing else reads as concealment, and it produces enquiries from people who will be disappointed at the viewing. A photograph of a perfectly average bathroom costs you nothing and builds trust.

Include the parking, the laundry, the yard if there is one, and the entrance — particularly for a suite, where how you get in matters to people.

What You May Not Say

This matters more than any marketing tip on this page.

Human rights legislation limits what you may consider in choosing a tenant and what you may say in advertising one. Preferences about family status, age, origin, disability, receipt of public assistance and similar characteristics are not yours to state or to apply, however reasonable they feel in your head.

Describe the property and its terms. Never the person you are picturing.

“Two bedroom suite, no pets, non-smoking, one parking space, tenant pays power” is a description of a property. Phrases about who would be ideal for it are a different thing entirely, and the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission is the authority on where that line sits. Read it before writing your first listing rather than after a complaint.

Tenant screening covers the same limits on the assessment side.

Price Is Part of the Marketing

Where you price changes who applies, not just how many.

Below market fills fast and generates a bigger pool — but a bigger pool is not automatically a better one, and you carry that rent for the whole tenancy, not just the first month. Above market means a longer vacancy, and vacancy costs more than people expect once you count the carrying costs against the extra rent you were holding out for.

Setting the right rent treats this properly, including how to read the signals that tell you the number is wrong.

How You Respond Is Part of the Product

Good tenants have options. They are assessing you at the same time you are assessing them, and the first message is the first evidence they get.

Respond promptly. A reply two days later tells someone what repairs will be like.

Respond consistently. Same information, same tone, same process for everyone. That is fair, it is a defensible way to run a selection process, and it happens to be what organised applicants respond well to.

Have your process ready before you advertise: the application form, what you will ask for, how showings will run. Improvising in front of applicants signals exactly what it is.

Showings

Group or individual is a genuine trade-off. Group showings are efficient and create visible interest, but they give you no time with anyone and let applicants observe each other. Individual showings take far longer and tell you much more.

Whichever you choose, be on time, and know the property’s faults before someone points at one. “The window in the second bedroom is due for replacement in the spring” is a far better answer than being caught out by it — and it tells an applicant you are honest, which is the single most useful thing they can learn about a prospective landlord.

Bring the application form with you. Interest fades in the time it takes someone to go home and find their email.

Then Screen Properly

Marketing builds the pool. Screening chooses from it, and it has its own rules, limits and failure modes — covered here. Once someone is in place, managing problems covers what happens when a tenancy needs intervention.

Where Tanner Fits In

If you are buying or holding a rental in Saskatoon, I can help you think about the property as a rental before you buy it — which unit types rent well, what a realistic vacancy assumption looks like, and how a property will show to tenants rather than only to buyers.

No pressure, just clear local advice.

Source Notes

Landlord and tenant rights and obligations in Saskatchewan are set by The Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 and administered by the Office of Residential Tenancies; the Government of Saskatchewan pages linked above are the starting point. What you may consider in selecting a tenant, and what you may say in an advertisement, are governed by human rights legislation — the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission is the authority and is linked above.

No rents, vacancy rates or market figures are quoted in this article.