Another post mentioned FB a few times. How many put their vacancies on fb? Do you invite friends and family to view your vacancies and prices? If not, who do you invite?

I do have a business fb page but am not sure who to invite to view it as I really don't want friends knowing everything we are doing - really don't want them knowing our business. Am I being too 'protective'?

I took down my business FB page. I have two FB personas: personal for family and friends and then another name entirely which I use to "Friend" prospective tenants, or message them. I post nothing about myself there.

Your level of comfort is up to you to decide. I post our ads on FB sometimes...but honestly haven't gotten much response. Most of our traffic comes from Zillow and it's syndicates. Trulia is # 2 and Hotpads is # 3.

I hear your concern, though. I don't like discussing # of units with anyone other than possibly an other LL. We understand the reason behind the comments. Someone who has 200 units...we'd like to know how did you scale up to that? It's not an envy or pride thing among us.

When we get the occasional "How many units do you have?" I respond: "Ask me, it's not enough. Ask my wife, it's too many."

I have this feeling that some crazy family action could begin if we revealed too much of what we've achieved and where we're going now.

I look at FB, and often see the "Home wanted" ads from people who dream about finding their 3bed/2bath for $500 including utilities that will take their 3 dogs and 4 cats and that their pitties are just darling and loving.

I don't bother to advertise on FB, although I may do so this coming spring. If I do, I'll make another account to just manage the rentals.

I've had good results on Zillow and the others.

Meanwhile, people regularly ask me how many I have. I can safely say 10, which is a safe number that says I'm a professional LL, but not so big I have it all. I usually say that I administer 10 properties for the local bank and look forward to the day I actually own them :)

By the way - that line helps a lot when dealing with some of the "handyman" types.

Doesn't do any good for me to post on my personal page since I don't like to rent to friends and family or connections from my other business, All my FB Friends fall into that category for the most part so I stay away.

An FB business page with company name only is different but it's also not that stocked with FB Friends.

I recently started posting to our local buy/sell/trade page or "Area Housing" pages. I've been active long enough to recognize a lot of the names that get tagged, and I'm not impressed by them. And I'm not surprised that those particular people are perpetually in search of fresh housing.

If Texas let ll's garnish, they'd totally be on my list for garnishment... :) As it is, they're on my "I learned my lesson" list. FB can be a little brutal, though.

We go for clean/safe/functional. You've got people who are living on the edge and are all, "I'm looking for a home to grow old in!" but also say something like, "Not enough upgrades! And the yard's not fenced!" And then you see they're signing up with the local slum lord or the local RTO guy who will throw them out the moment they slip up... and you know

No one uses CL here. At all.

Our local CL type online classifieds has outlived it's usefulness. Still advertise there but results are minimal.

I didn't want too but started advertising on FB. I admin several rental groups/pages & post to most buy, sell, trade pages. It's a cesspool but it's required here if you want something moved. My last 4 tenants have come from FB & have all been exceptional. But I rent at the top of our market so the tire kickers & time wasters fall by the wayside. You can always shut off comments.....funnel them to your preferred method of contact. It's also a great barometer of what's out there, what rents are running, how long things are staying listed, etc.

Ponari,

We get a TON of play on our business FB.

We shut off the comments to avoid trolls (but somehow FB lets them thru anyway so we must monitor it multiple times a day.)

TONS of private messages thru FB as folks look at homes and ask questions. Easy to respond from a smartphone. This crowd is expecting INSTANT answers and will hit us up every few hours if we don't respond.

This is how 33% of the rental market communicates in 2017. I understand why some LLs fear it but to ignore it is naive.

Millenials LIVE on it all day long, even while working. We can "converse" with applicants thru the day on private messaging while they are on the job.

The new iGeneration who are now working and renting grew up on it.

We add cute pet photos to add interest so it's not boring.

We can post the video walkthru on FB.

For a few dollars you can BOOST your post and it will be seen by THOUSANDS whom you have filtered by zip code, age, education, income...

BRAD

Listen to Brad and understand that this has nothing to do with your personal Facebook page. You start a whole new Facebook account (use a different email) and create a business page. You get followers by boosting your posts and also adding interesting content.

We've been using Facebook for maybe 6 months and we have over 300 followers. When I post a vacancy, those people see it. If they like or share it, then all their friends see it as well.

Thank you everyone for your feedback. Would anyone be willing to share their fb page so I could look at it to determine what the heck I'm doing wrong as this house has been advertised since July 1st - and nothing!!

This is the longest vacancy we've ever had. The realtor beat me to the punch and put it on Zillow, it's on MLS, rentals.com, hotpads etc.