If you have a property that you’re trying to keep rented, something you should definitely invest in are some good pictures of that property. The old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is very true in this industry. Most people rent short-term furnished apartments and houses without seeing them in-person first, so they need to be reassured about what they’re paying for, and being able to show them lots of great pictures is the best way of doing that.
I was once looking for a furnished apartment to rent in Sydney, Australia for 3 months, and I found a company that manages short-term furnished apartments in the city. The company looked professional, they had a decent website, and the properties were all well described, but they only had one small fuzzy grainy photo of each of their properties. I sent them an email letting them know I was interested, and asked if they had any more photos of their available properties they could send me, they replied and said they didn’t have any more. Not surprisingly, I didn’t end up renting from them. Their properties averaged about $3000 a month to rent, and I was telling them I’m looking to rent for 3 months, so that’s basically a $9000 sale for them, yet they couldn’t provide me with anything more than one small fuzzy grainy photo of the apartment? Unfortunately, the lack of pictures is way too common in the furnished rentals industry. It’s amazing that people can go and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a property, they can spend thousands furnishing the property, thousands advertising the property and yet they can’t take the time to snap a few decent pictures of the place.
Anyways, I’ll end this mini-rant by saying that if you haven’t already done so, either take some pictures of your property yourself or hire a professional photographer to do it. It’s 2006, digital cameras are cheap, so there’s no excuse for not having some good pictures of your property.