Four out of the box ways to get your investment property rented

Are you looking to rent out your property, or a room and have had no success? Do you truly think you've tried everything? Think again.

While it's our instinct to hit up the mainstream listings portals first, as the most common place for real estate searches and for tenants to start, there are firstly a growing number of alternative online portals that are increasingly specific. Rent With Pets, for instance, could be one place to list if you are allowing pets into your property.

Gumtree, Craigslist and even eBay have also been known to see some use from landlords of all sorts of properties. However, when it comes to those looking to rent out rooms or entire properties, it seems the options are endless.

Here are a few of Property Observer’s weird and wonderful favourites that have seen those seeking a renter heading to. It's worth noting that those seeking a property often also post ads in similar places - sometimes it's worth looking the "other way" and finding the tenant, rather than letting them find you.

Tinder

The swipe-through-faces dating site has now been turned into a potential renting portal. Now, we’re not quite sure what else is in the property, but it's certainly an innovative way to seek out a co-renter in the local area, as it is a geographically-based app initially. Of course, this isn't the function of the app - so it will be interesting to see how long this is allowed for, or whether it could become a new piece of functionality for the company.

It could pan out something like including your visual tenancy application, and see which tenant you accept then accepts you in return.

Rent on first sight?

This reminds us somewhat of Next For Sale - the portal that suggests properties that may be coming on the market soon and allows you to express interest. Perhaps a Next For Rent is in the making too?

Advertising on a pole

Regularly seen around university campus areas, such as the entire Ultimo and Broadway area in Sydney, signs that used to be more regularly used to advertise lost dogs are being used to advertise potential rental opportunities. If you’re keen to see an example, there’s often posters on the crossing between Lee Street and George Street in Ultimo.

These often come with a “tear off” tag, and are regularly translated into different languages (some have no English on at all) presumably for international students.

Often renting out one room at a time (and sometimes even share rooms), some have been seen that even specify the race of the person they’d be happy to rent the property to.

Be wary of the council you’re in – some consider these to be unlawful and “bill posters” depending on the definition they use. For instance, the City of Sydney allows school fetes, garage sales, markets and missing animal posters – which, after one week of display, they remove. However, those that relate to “commercial advertising” can result in an on-the-spot fine to the person putting up the poster from $330 for individuals to $400 for businesses.

Within the City of Sydney there are nine poster pillars around the city that allow you to promote your event, which operate on a first come, first served basis before being removed every Tuesday.

Facebook and Twitter

Not a day goes by when a rental opportunity isn’t posted up on both of these websites. Real estate agents and property managers are increasingly taking to Twitter to share their latest offerings, some even doing “rental of the day” type posts.

On Facebook, groups are regularly made to ‘rent out’ houses – surprisingly, it often works.

Other social media is also coming to the fore, including Circle and even Instagram and Tumblr have been known to be good places to share a pretty looking rental.

Make a Youtube video

Increasingly real estate agencies worldwide are using videos to promote both their sales listings and their vacant rentals. They don’t even need to be hugely high quality, depending on the purpose of the advertisement, although it helps if you have a tripod and a steady hand.

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One man even recently sold his Volvo via Youtube. As you can see, it helps if your video goes viral.

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