How do you choose a property manager that will make your life easier, without nickel and diming you for every service? Here are 3 research steps when hiring.

How To Choose a Property Manager: 3 Research Steps

Between open homes and tenant background checks to handling maintenance and last-minute emergencies, you've realised that making 'passive income' from managing a rental property isn't very passive without some outsourcing. The next question is  how to choose a property manager that will work to achieve the best possible outcomes for you financially, as well as making life easier. 

If it's passive income you're after, choosing the right property manager will pay off enormously in terms of how much time and effort is required. But how do you choose a property manager when there's so many options and even new-wave alternatives on the market? It all starts with research. Here are three ways to research property management companies effectively to find the right one for your home. 

Choosing a property manager step #1: Look past page 1 of Google

Like anything these days, most searches start online. Although it's important to note, the names that pop up first aren't always the best. Generally these companies will be the ones who invest the most in marketing and therefore are easier to find. So it's important to dig deeper with questions such as:

Are customers raving about them on Google, Yelp and Zillow? Are they rated 4.5 stars or above? How many reviews do they have? Over 100 positive reviews is going to say more than a company who has 20 reviews in total. Do the negative comments seem like personal gripes or serious complaints? When you're compiling a short list, take a moment to scan through some of the reviews to look for consistent themes around helpfulness and potential deal-breakers. 

Do they have a good reputation in the industry?

Every state has its own laws regarding the certification of property managers: for more information on the requirements specific to your state check the links collated here. There is a handful of national trade associations that you should consult with, too. The most prominent association by far is the National Association of Residential Property Managers. 

You don’t have to be a member of these groups to do business as a property manager, so it shouldn’t necessarily disqualify a candidate if they aren’t. But that being said, if they are completely unaffiliated, it’s something of a red flag.

There are also databases online that you can check to see how a company stands within the industry, such as the Better Business Bureau.

Take a look at the company's website and find out what they're about. What do they believe in, what is their company culture, history or presence like in your neighborhood? Is it easy to find the information you need? There are occasionally some excellent old-school property management companies who don’t have the strongest online presence, but a nicely designed site that is user-friendly is never a bad sign that they're considering the experience of their customers.

Finally, do you believe in their mission and trust the people working for them? Are they growing, with a happy customer base? For instance, Belong's mission is to connect people who own and love a house, to people who want a place they can live in and love. This ethos is why we're growing so fast and making people happy in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Diego, Orange County, and Miami - with many more to come. You can even take a look at the careers section of our website to give you the confidence that anyone who is involved with your home is someone that approached their job with passion and respect. 

Choosing a property manager step #2: Ask around

Do you know any other landlords in the local area? Or renters, for that matter. Both will have a great perspective on the quality of service provided by the company that manages the building or home they live in. They can give you some lived experience on what to be wary of too, or what makes a positive/negative experience. With a few good recommendations in your pocket, you can add these to your online research list to start vetting. 

Choosing a property manager step #3: Prepare some questions

It's all well and good to get the warm-fuzzies from a mission statement or flashy website, but how does your chosen property manager perform? Here are some questions to consider for research or to ask any property manager you decide to interview:

How many properties does the average manager have assigned to them?

What are the property managers average vacancy periods?

What is the average lease term? Do many tenants stay on long-term?

What is the fee structure? What services are included?

How does the property manager screen for applicants?

How does the property manager handle evictions if things don't work out? 

How does the company manage and charge for maintenance requests? i.e what kind of contractor network do they have and do they mark up those services?

The fees and charges is a big one. The average rate is between 6 and 10 percent, but some property managers will charge extra for a whole range of services from marketing and staging to generating leases and evicting tenants. 

Researching Belong as a property management alternative

While researching how to choose a property manager, consider an alternative to the traditional agencies: Belong. Belong manages everything about rental homes, so you won't have to lift a finger. 

And to answer some of the research questions upfront, Belong homes are leased in 19 days on average, has 66% less vacancy and 71% of Belong residents renew their 1-year lease. Oh and we never upcharge for marketing and advertising (including photos and virtual tours!), call outs, moving in/out, lease renewal, evictions, or market price analysis. It's all covered by the low management rate of 6%. Plus, all maintenance expenses, management and placement fees are tax deductible.

To learn more about why Belong isn't your garden-variety property manager, check out our dedicated homeowners page or use the calculator below to do some back-of-the-napkin math.  

The pandemic has made us all more appreciative of the pristine beauty of nature – the question is, how can you bring some of that beauty home?

Belong’s Guide to the Cost-Contained Backyard Beautiful

The pandemic made us fall in love with our backyards all over again. Trapped in our houses and plots of land, we dug, weeded, planted, communed – and of course – improved. We saw the phenomenon happen all across our Belong community.

“Backyard improvements make staycations more attractive” declared USA Today. And a survey done by OnePoll found that seven of our 10 people said that “adding to their home exterior spaces has become a new hobby.”

The same poll further bears out what we know intuitively – and likely experienced ourselves. It found we are spending 14 hours a week outside – three hours more than before the pandemic. What’s more, early three-quarters of respondents shared that their outside time was important to their mental well-being. 

At Belong, where we connect homeowners who have places that are ready to be loved – with people ready to love them – this powerful lure of our front and back yards could not be more welcome. After all, an aesthetically elevated outdoor setting makes a home even more ready to be embraced. 

We often think about memories made inside the home – and they indisputably are – but just as powerful and important are those made outside. Playing catch with the kids as the sun falls into the sky; entertaining friends and family on a perfect summer night; setting up the house for Halloween – these are irreplaceable. And of course, Instagrammable. 

We’re realistic and know that our residents aren’t like to be making expensive improvements in their outdoor space. But you don’t have to add a deck to add to your everyday enjoyment. There are wonderful things you can buy that aren’t that expensive that can add hours of simple joy to your experience - and that you can take with you, should you move.

Without going all the way to a fancy installed grass grill, there is no shortage of options to meet whatever level of grilling obsessive you might be. If you’re looking for some smart advice, head over to the BBQ Guys website. You can’t get better tips, and we love the way they break it down into smokers, Kamado grills, pellet grills, even electric grills. The expert reviews are truly “expert” – you can tell they were written by folks who have astronomic BBQ IQs.

Still staying with the joys of heat, you can quickly transform the look and feel of your backyard with a firepit. They don’t throw off much heat, but there’s nothing more romantic or relaxing than sitting outside, sipping some wine, and watching the light from the fire bounce off your glass.

Here’s a link to some of the best outdoor firepits – including fire bowls that sit on tables – at some surprisingly affordable prices.  We were particularly drawn to the JHY Design clean-burning portable unit – smokeless, odorless, and clean-burning. At just $29.99, it won’t burn a hole in your budget.

When it comes to your lawn and garden, we have some tips for every Belong resident, as well as our Belong homeowners who cover the maintenance. Instead is a new, lawn fertilizer made with natural ingredients like wheat flour meal and molasses, that is delivered at exactly the right seasonal moment. 

As for planting on a budget, there’s a lot of “green for the buck” that is achievable; a good place to start is here, and here, and here.  And these upcycled DIY planter ideas will inspire you to think differently – and creatively – about items you might otherwise just toss.

Lawn games are a wonderful diversion, and they have been experiencing a boom that has continued even as we are getting vaccinated. You certainly don’t need to spend nearly a grand on a Jaques croquet set, even though a company founded in 1795, and the oldest sports and games manufacturer in the world, deserves some attention. Here’s a link to some more affordable options, including a set that is handcrafted by the Amish, who are known to enjoy a game of croquet after they do their chores.

There’s lots more to occupy you on your lawn; The New York Times published a story back in May that covered everything from badminton to bocce, pétanque, and lawn bowling. They have their own histories, but as Brooks Butler Hays, author of “Balls on the Lawn – Games to Live By” charmingly puts it:

“Lawn games do have rules, but not too many, and they don’t demand a great amount of skill. “They aren’t athletic endeavors …  the stakes are low enough that even if people aren’t into the competition, they can still have fun.”

There is no shortage of memorable moments to be created in the back and front yards of homes that are part of the Belong community.  And if you are feeling spiritual, why not plant a tree (with the approval of your homeowner, of course.) As Nelson Henderson said, “The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”

Created to connect homeowners who love their homes, with residents ready to move in and build their lives there, Belong is a tech-enabled platform that takes the bumps, frustrations, and uncertainties out of the experience –  to create delightful interactions from Day One to Day Forever.  Bringing the practices of leading hospitality companies to an industry that was marked by a lack of caring and manual processes – Belong reinvents every step of the journey, all the way through to Belong Pros who are talented, responsible, and prideful contractors.  Each component we touch is an opportunity to advanced our mission. No matter which side of the marketplace you are on, Belong honors your role and the communities we serve.

You might not realize it, but you have all the information a hacker would need to steal your tenants’ identity. Are you doing enough to keep it safe?

What Every Landlord Should Know About Cyber Security

If you're a landlord who self-manages their rental home, you have all the information a hacker would need to steal your tenants’ identity. Are you doing enough to keep them safe?

At first blush, the relationship between property management and cyber security might seem tenuous at best. “I’m self-managing one (or two) properties by email. I’m worried about finding a decent plumber, not getting hacked.” 

But think for a second about all the information you have on your tenants. You have their social security numbers. You know their previous addresses and their current address. You know their birthdays, their bank account information, and their credit card number. 

If a hacker got their hands on all that data, they’d have a field day. They could have enough information to steal two identities – yours, and your tenants. So not only would you have a big mess on your hands, but you might even have some legal liability if you didn’t take reasonable precautions. All this makes it doubly incumbent on landlords and property managers alike to closely guard the reams of personal data they have on hand.

Be prepared to safeguard tenant information

The first thing to stop and think about is whether you are literate enough yourself about how to protect your computer and mobile phone from attackers. Think of it as “data hygiene” and “data health” – you need to understand it, and put in the work to stay healthy, just like you do when it comes to personal wellness.

Start with making sure none of your passwords have already been hacked. Search your email address on HaveIBeenPwned.com to see if any of your personal information is already out there and if any of your passwords have been compromised.

Even if you’re the rare individual who’s never been hacked – and has never given a password or your personal data to a company that’s been hacked – we still recommend having 2-step authentication in place (in fact, anywhere it’s offered, we recommend turning it on). Also make sure that you’re using a strong password that includes symbols, numbers, and capital and lowercase letters. 

Most breaches are the equivalent of leaving the front door open. The most significant risk is from schemes like “phishing” emails – where an email seems legitimate, you download it, and through that you allow a virus to enter your computer and potentially steal whatever data it holds.

When it comes to defending against such an attack is you: be vigilant, skeptical, and hesitant before opening any attachment you receive via email, even if it’s from someone you know – maybe they fell victim to a phishing attack, and hackers are using their address book and contacts to find their next victim.  

Another method of preventing phishing attacks – and any attack that uses malware – is antivirus software. Programs like Norton and Avast will scan these attachments before allowing your computer to download them to see if they contain any malicious code. 

Even if you do your best to protect your data, we live in an interconnected age. Every app and software program you use – Microsoft Word, WhatsApp, Dropbox – is vulnerable. In fact, every second of every day, hackers are doing their best to compromise those platforms. These companies spend billions to protect themselves, but we have all seen the headlines about breaches involving millions.

Sometimes, a breach of one of these platforms gets patched – so stay alert, and if there is an update available that patches a breach, do it immediately. For instance, Apple and Microsoft regularly release security patches and updates to address vulnerabilities. In some cases – like when Equifax was breached – the company offered free identity protection. 

Of course, in defending yourself against hackers and data breaches, you’re also defending your residents – not to mention the people who might have submitted an application that included a wealth of personal information but who, for whatever reason, didn’t get the house or apartment. 

There are things you can and should do, though, to further defend those people.

The first step in protecting people’s personal information is getting rid of it – especially if you no longer need it. So once a lease is signed and a new resident is moving in, delete all the other rental applications you received for your home. Get it off your computer and out of your email account. That way, if you get hacked, there will be less information for bad actors to exploit. 

We also recommend encrypting any files you need to hold onto – for instance, the rental application you received from your current residents and their lease agreement. If they’re PDFs or Word documents, it’s surprisingly simple to encrypt them and password-protect them

The next step is to restrict access to the information you do need to hold onto. This shouldn’t be a huge problem if you’re self-managing your own property, but if there are other people intimately involved with the process – if, say, you have a handyman you use all the time to help with smaller maintenance requests – limit their access to only the documents and information they need. 

We’ve written before about how IoT devices like smart locks and thermostats can make life easier for landlords and homeowners. But those too are exploitable points of access for hackers.

The stakes are different in this case; if your smart lock is hacked, that isn’t going to make your tenants’ identities vulnerable to theft.

But significant physical damage can be inflicted on your property such as a device being breached. A hacked smart lock could make it impossible for your tenants to gain entry, creating massive inconvenience. Even worse, it could allow intruders into your rental property, which could result in theft or assault.

Of course, these are unlikely possibilities – and the convenience factor offsets the rare risk – but it is worth understanding the full picture. 

Along similar lines, it’s important to control access to your WiFi systems: never use the default password the router and modem came with, and make sure you’re using a WPA2 network, and not a WEP. 

Find someone you can trust with your data

As a  modern, tech-forward property management company, backed by leading venture firms, Belong understands cybersecurity risks and works with best-in-class vendors to secure their platform. While threats are pervasive, as we indicated before, if you have any specific questions, we invite you to ask us. Similarly, you should ask the property manager you are dealing with now – and any you are considering – the same questions. The answers may surprise you!

How do you interview property management companies when they all appear to offer the same service? These 8 questions will help you dig deeper to find gold.

6 Interview Questions to Ask Property Management Companies

How do you interview property management companies when they all appear to offer the same service? Here are 6 questions to ask prospective properties managers to dig deeper and uncover best person for the job of managing your rental home. 

How do you find a property manager that is the right fit for your circumstances and budget? By uncovering who will make your life easier and how they plan to take the stress out of finding and handling tenants for you. So before you sign a contract with a new property manager, here are 7 important questions to ask. 

1. What kind of clients do you typically work with?

This question will help determine the kind of landlords the property manager is experienced in dealing with. If they work with bigger clients and large developers, that might be a sign that they’re a reputable provider. But on the other hand, if they have big clients, are they going to make enough time for individual landlords with just one or two properties? How many properties on average does each manager look after? Depending on their answer, you might want to dig into their approach to working with smaller clients, or what the average duration of a relationship is with individual landlords. 

2. What services are included in your fees? 

Typically a property management company will charge between 6 and 10% of the monthly rent to manage your property. But there is a whole host of essential services that you're going to need that may not be included in this fee. You could be charged for everything from marketing to property inspections, even renewing the lease. This means a low management fee might lead to a stack of hidden costs that you weren't prepared for. 

Belong on the other hand never upcharges for these services.

3. Can you take me through the full process of letting my property?

On the outside, it might seem that all property managers offer the same services. But not all property managers are created equal. What are they using to achieve the best possible market analysis? Are they stuck in the past or using up to date technology to market your home (such as 3D tours and virtual walkthroughs). Ask them to take you through the process of marketing and vetting tenants, as well as how they arrived at your proposed monthly rent. 

4. How do you handle maintenance requests and emergency work? 

Find out what the turnaround time is like for maintenance and urgent repair work on your home if it was needed. Here it’s important to put yourself in the shoes of a hypothetical resident with a pressing emergency – and how that reflects on you, their landlord. If your toilet was leaking, do you think they’d be able to fix the problem fast enough? What kinds of costs would you be facing to use their contractors? 

If a property manager is using modern, digital services to ensure you're paid on time, this is telling. It means they're keeping up with the times and are not regressively old-school or going to leave you waiting for cheques to clear. Find out what kind of financial documentation you can expect to receive to help with your record keeping. You should also find out what the process is if tenants fall behind on their rent, as this could put a serious dent in your cashflow. 

Belong guarantees rent, giving homeowners the choice between getting paid on the first of every month, or receiving the entire year of rent upfront. Regardless of when tenants pay, you can bank on when your rental income is received. 

This is an unpleasant topic of conversation, but better to broach it sooner rather than later. Property managers will typically manage the process, but some will charge for this service or may incur legals costs that are passed on to you. Belong on the other hand offers up to $15,000 in eviction protection for any residents we place. 

If you're questioning the value of property management, Belong is the answer

What if you could ditch property management services to modernize your entire rental experience? Belong does exactly that, combining industry-busting technology with human smarts to make renting lovable for both homeowners and their residents.

Visit our homeowner's page to find out more about how our services are helping people to ditch property management in Seattle, Redmond, Oakland, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Miami and many more.

Whether staging for sale or marketing a new rental, you need the 2022 list of tricks and hacks to make your house feel like a palace.

7 of The Best Decor Ideas & Tips To Stage a Room

First impressions are everything, especially when it comes to homes. From your online images to the feeling someone gets when they walk through the door, here are seven ways to stage any room to give a sense of space and comfort. 

Before anyone has even set foot in your home, it's going to be judged on how it looks. Great photos attract people to open homes, but this is where you want to really grab them with a sense of space and comfort so they can picture themselves living there. Just as curb appeal is important, so is the way you stage the rooms within your home. So whether you're looking to make a sale or want to stage your rental for knock-out marketing material that will reduce vacancy time between tenants, check out this guide for staging a room that will attract plenty of eyes.  

How to stage a room for real estate listings

1. Use a divider to give one room, two vibes 

It’s easy to see why open floor plans are so in these days; they make a room feel light and spacious and big. But it’s important to make sure that you don’t lose a sense of coziness and intimacy by going too big. Consider using room dividers that can turn one room into two, each with its own aesthetic and purpose. A large staged living room can also act as a dining room when you use furniture to divide up the space. If the room has a unique architectural feature (for example, slanted ceiling or exposed brick walls), you can use them to help subdivide the space in an elegant and organic way. Another good way to reimagine a room: color-blocking with an accent wall or color-coordinated furniture.

2. Use mirrors to make your staged room feel larger

Reflective surfaces are a tried-and-true way to make a room seem more spacious. But there’s more to it than slapping a piece of glass on the wall; mirrors of different styles, shapes, and sizes will impart their own unique aesthetic impact on your staged room. For instance, a gallery-style mirror wall will give your space an artsy flair, while placing one across from a window will emphasize a room's natural light and highlight outside scenery. Mirrored furniture – another trendy item – will disappear into the background of a room, expanding its visual footprint with a chic, modern flair.

3. Serene color schemes will make your room pop

White paint will help create the perfect blank canvas for your walls, but white’s never just white. In fact there are many different tones and tints favored among architects and designers alike, from eggshell to oyster. With a strong, simple foundation, you have the freedom to use furniture that adds a contrasting hue or texture: Think a soft-green velvet couch or statement lighting fixture. Truly, the sky's the limit when it comes to staged living room color schemes. Consider your area and trendy color schemes when picking the right colors for your real estate. 

4. Use light to brighten your room and make it feel larger

The key to making a room feel spacious is light coming in from all angles. But beware, overhead lighting can be harsh and clinical – hospital-like, in the worst-case scenario. That’s definitely not ideal for a staged room meant to sell your real estate!

Instead, use floor lamps and position them so they fill the room from all corners – it’s a guaranteed way to give your space cozier. One statement overhead lighting fixture, combined with table and floor lamps, will give you options to tweak the lighting scheme depending on the time of day and what the weather’s like outside when you’re hosting an open house. 

Pro Tip: The darker the room you're staging, the flashier the lamps should be – a darker room benefits from bright, metallic materials, while a light one has a bit more wiggle room.

5. Use the height of the ceilings to your advantage

As soon as furniture starts to bump up against its boundaries, like walls and ceilings, the room starts to feel overcrowded. Keep tables, chairs, and centered and away from corners. Then, emphasize the height of your ceilings using tall statement pieces like a vintage lamp or vertical storage space, like this ladder storage shelf.

6. Choose reflective materials for staging furniture

When it comes to vertical surfaces, less is more. A chic glass coffee table or Lucite bar cart can serve as both storage and statement design pieces, but because of the transparency and lightness of the material, they’ll always blend aesthetically with the rest of the room. Your residents will keep their focus on the features that make your home unique, while still having a place to set down a cup of tea or store a bottle of wine.

In addition to staging your home to look stylish and spacious, no one is going to feel any desire for a place that feels or looks dirty. Replace used furnishings with clean staged furniture, deep clean the floors and windows, and add a few accessories that balance the cleanliness with a cozy, lived-in vibe. 

Staging is critical to maximizing the potential of your real estate listing. When listing your house or holding an open house, a clean, staged room with top-notch furniture and decor will go a long way in getting your property the best possible price, sale or rental. 

When you work with Belong, you’ll have access to experts that can help with the entire home staging process, from assembling furniture to home repairs. Belong will even show off your spotless, staged interiors with a virtual open home and 3D tour included. 

Belong is simplifying the rental experience and helping more homeowners reach their financial goals through real estate. Visit our homeowner's page to find out more about how our services are helping people to ditch property management in Seattle, Redmond, Oakland, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Miami and many more.

7 Best Decor Ideas & Tips To Stage a Room

These simple, quick and budget-friendly upgrades will help renters fall in love with your home, fast.

4 Simple but Impressive Interior Upgrades For Rental Homes

Homeowners who list their properties with Belong love their homes and want their residents to feel the exact same way. These simple, quick, and budget-friendly upgrades will help renters fall in love with your home much faster. 

Belong is the innovative property management alternative built to minimize vacancy (which is one reason that homeowners love us so much).  But sometimes renovations are necessary.  This shouldn’t be viewed as a burden, but an opportunity to smartly update the property.  Simple, elegant upgrades to the living space can pay dividends immediately, and down the line, making your home that much more attractive to potential residents — many of who are looking for certain creature comforts – and Belong knows from experience what they are.

Though a glamorous walk-in remains the gold standard, most people are keenly aware that finding one is something of a pipe dream. That being said, the many intelligently designed organization systems on the market can make a closet feel luxurious by making the greatest use of the available space.  From Ikea to Wayfair to the Container Store, there are a ton of cost-effective options these days.

Belong is a big advocates of closet systems, because they mean so much to residents. They communicate that the private spaces only they see are as important and cared-for as the living room or the bathroom or the kitchen. It makes them feel great, too, every time open the closet door and see everything so neatly arranged and displayed.

The paradox of climate change: summers are getting hotter, making everyone want to blast the AC 24/7, but you can’t help but feel guilty doing so, knowing the thing that is keeping you cool is also contributing to global warming.  Fortunately there are many new energy-efficient models that should at least mitigate the guilt; there are also new models that run quieter, so you can have a Zoom call without shouting.  We’ve also seen models that hang below the window frame, allowing the maximum amount of light to pour in through the windows.  Because what’s summer without a little summer sun?

Redoing the floors can be costly and time-consuming. There is a fashionable solution though: vinyl stickers that you can cut to measure and stick onto the floor. Of course you can do this throughout the entire apartment, but we recommend starting in the kitchens and the bathrooms. Why?  First of all, the tiles you find on the floors of many bathrooms and kitchens are so 80s; second of all, those floors tend to take a beating, so why not redo them on the cheap — especially if the results look anything but!

Adding molding and/or trims to walls/windows/cupboards can be an affordable way to instantly give an elegant, charming lift to a space. Picture rail trims invite tenants to add their own artwork to personalise a space, but even if they go unused, they have an aesthetic value in and of itself. You can also use thin, contrasting trim to open up and lighten a space - so we recommend avoiding thick or wooden trim which can look heavy and dated. 

Belong can make the upgrades and find the right tenants

Even if people aren’t actively looking for these kinds of upgrades, the fact that the homeowners care about their home — and their next residents —makes the place that much more desirable. When you've taken the time to upgrade your property, you need a committed partner who can ensure you can capture the value in your monthly rent. By partnering with Belong, we can assist with upgrades and renovations to your rental and find someone to love it, fast. 

With outdoor entertaining becoming a bigger and bigger part of our lives, the question for landlords becomes, “How can I make my backyard as comfortable as possible?” And we got your back!

5 Affordable Outdoor Hacks To Elevate Your Rental's Backyard

Even though it’s become something of a social necessity because of the pandemic, there’s always been a certain appeal to outdoor entertaining. In fact, in our opinion, there’s nothing better than sitting outside with your friends under the stars on a warm July night. 

But because Covid has made outdoor entertaining such a central part of our lives, it’s become that much more important that our backyards are comfortable and accommodating. It’s no longer enough that your rental property has some green space — now you have to have a green space that’s actually welcoming. 

When you’re self-managing your own property, there’s always this balancing act between providing the best service and accommodations without putting too big a dent in your bottom line. You might want to make your backdoor space nicer to attract the best possible residents, but you can’t shell out a small fortune on the upgrades. That’s why hacks like the ones we’ll explore in this article are so wonderful: they allow you to make significant improvements without costing a significant amount.

Because there are so many different types of gardens and outdoor spaces, we’ve categorized these hacks by what kind of space they’ll work in: we’ll start with hacks for smaller gardens, and move on to ones for bigger spaces.

The best way to encourage outdoor entertaining is to make it as easy as possible to do (call it the “If you build it, they will come” theory of home improvements).  This beautiful fold-down serving station makes it easy to fix and pour drinks without having to enter into the house; not only that, but once it’s folded out you can use the table top to set up boardgames and the like.  It can even be used as a makeshift desk; after all, the only thing better than working from home is working outdoors! 

It’s especially useful if you don’t have a lot of space, like a small urban garden. Or even a balcony!

We know we said these hacks were for elegant, English-style gardens, but this beautiful French bench would work wonders on either side of the Channel. 

This one also takes a little technical know-how, but the out-of-pocket costs are so minimal — and the aesthetic affect is so resplendent — we think it’s worth the effort.  All it takes is some wood, two identical side-chairs, and a little bit of elbow grease to create this elegant addition to any backyard.  In fact the end result is so beautiful your residents might end up moving it indoors and using it as an entryway bench!

This hack might not be as simple as some of the others, but worth the effort!

Another relatively simple hack to execute, this bird feeder isn’t only charming and quirky, but by bringing feathered friends onto your property, it’ll make the backyard feel that much more romantic and special.  Plus we love a hack that requires you drink a bottle of wine.  It combines two of our favorite past-times — Beaujolais and home improvement!

It's a great trick for staging a home – when the prospective tenants walk outside, and see the attention to detail, it will help seal the deal by making the house loveable.

An especially charming addition to the backyard of a larger, family-friendly home, a tree swing will lend the space a sense of welcoming homey-ness. The best part is that installation is relatively simple — and in case a tree swing isn’t your idea of fun, you can use a lot of the same tricks and techniques to set up a hammock instead.

An especially great hack if your outdoor area doesn’t have much space for flower beds, these easy (and cheap) straw-bale planters will lend any area an aura of rustic, rugged authenticity. They’re perfect for herb gardens, too. 

Though many of these hacks are hackable even for the clumsiest among us, when you work with Belong you have access to their professional vendor network of over 10,000 contractors, who can help you build the ones that take a bit more know-how (and maybe a power tool or two).  

Easier access to professional contractors is one of the many ways Belong is simplifying the rental experience and helping more homeowners reach their financial goals through real estate. Visit our homeowner's page to find out more about how our services are helping people to ditch property management in Seattle, Redmond, Oakland, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Miami and many more.

With outdoor entertaining becoming a bigger and bigger part of our lives, the question for landlords becomes, “How can I make my backyard as comfortable as possible?”

Find out everything you need to know, do, and follow up on in order to successfully market your rental home and get your property loved

How to Market Your Rental Property and Find a Great Resident, Fast

With so many listing websites out there, it’s hard to know where to advertise your rental property, and how to make it stand out from the crowd. This guide will take you through the process, and give you the power to find a resident who will love your home as much as you do.

One of the questions we get asked the most at Belong is “What do I need to know, do, and follow up on in order to successfully market my rental property?”

Back in the pre-digital era, it was as simple as posting a listing in your local classifieds!  But now it seems like you need to be an expert in several different fields to check all the right boxes.  You need to be a marketing expert, one who is fully conversant in all the terminology and idiom that the natives of the real-estate industry use; you need to be a photographer and videographer who can make even the most basic spaces seem grand and inviting; and also you need to be a realtor – hyper-organized, super friendly and accommodating, up-to-date with market trends and rent prices, and willing to re-arrange your schedule on the whim of your potential clients. 

Given all that, is it any wonder that the process of finding a resident for your rental property seems so daunting?  Nor should it be a surprise that there is an entire industry devoted to helping landlords find tenants and keep them happy?  Even landlords who decide to self-manage their properties often choose to rely on brokers on the front end of the journey, to market the availability and find a resident.

If this sounds like a lot of work …That’s because it is.

It’s also the reason why so many people are working with Belong, the modern alternative to old-school, out-of-touch property managers.  Belong takes all these responsibilities off your hands, finding residents who will love your home as much as you do, while we treat your home with love and care.

Belong does so much for our homeowners that to list it all would create such a ridiculously long and unwieldy sentence that our Grammarly account would have the digital equivalent of an epileptic seizure.  We will prepare your house for the market, take photographs and videos (including 3D tours and virtual walkthroughs), list it on every relevant platform, show it to interested renters, and then prepare the contracts and help them move in. 

Curious to learn more about Belong? Click here, or see if your home qualifies for our platform, here.

If you want to be a true DIY-er, though, and handle the entire process by yourself, soup to nuts, this guide on how to market your own rental property will help you become a listing genius. 

Step 1: Understand the marketing channels

By channels, we are talking about the online platforms that list and describe properties for rent. That’s the formal way to describe them. The informal way is “Real estate porn.”

 It’s such a thing that there’s even a Saturday Night Live skit about it. So there’s no reason to be embarrassed if you too spend hours every day browsing through listing websites, looking at colonial masterpieces or brilliant new constructions.  It’s alluring.  In fact, many of us at Belong suffer from the same affliction. 

The good news is that if you spend a lot of time checking out houses for rent, you are ahead of the game when it comes to listing your own rental property.  You know the relevant sites, the kinds of photographs you need to take, the look and feel of a video walkthrough of a property.

Either way – a heavy user of real estate website or otherwise – you will find the information we’ve organized herein to be invaluable. Because the first step on the journey to successfully renting out your property is truly familiarizing yourself with the platforms and services you will use to market it.

With over 135 million listings, Zillow is the biggest real estate platform in the country.  And that’s just counting listings on Zillow.com: they also own Trulia and Hotpads, two other prominent listing sites.  So if you’re looking to rent out your home,, the first place you’ll want to list the vacancy is on Zillow. 

The nice thing about Zillow is that you are able to easily cross-list your vacancy on Trulia and Hotpads, increasing the number of eyeballs your ad will find.  

 The other nice thing about Zillow is that you can list one home for free for a month – which is perfect for people who only own a single rental property.  After 30 days it costs $9.99 a month to list on Zillow – a bargain, in our opinion, considering the platform’s reach.  Zillow also allows users to boost their listing, which gives it a more prominent placement on search results pages.

It probably goes without saying that there’s a lot of overlap between Zillow’s listings and Trulia’s: after all, as we stated above, Zillow owns Trulia.

But that being said, there are certain features that make Trulia unique relative to Zillow.  For one, it provides maps that give users information about the neighborhoods surrounding the properties they’re considering: it tells them what crime rates are in the area, where people eat and shop, what schools their children would have access to, and what your commute would be like. 

It's important for landlords to understand the way Zillow and Trulia organize the data about a listing, because it will educate you about how to position your listing; we’ll get into this subject a little later in the article, but when you’re marketing a rental property, it’s critical to remember that you’re also marketing a neighborhood.  If looking at Trulia teaches you something new about the area where you own a rental property, then browsing the site will be very much worth your time.

Much like Trulia, Apartments.com not only provides information about the individual listings on their platform, but they also have data on the neighborhoods in which those listings are located.  That includes info on shops and restaurants and the like, but Aparments.com also assigns each neighborhood walkability and bikeability scores.  They also have info on noise pollution, too. 

The main point of differentiation for landlords considering listing a home on Apartments.com is that the site is exclusively focused on rentals.  Which means that the audience it attracts is the exact audience you’re looking for. 

Apartments.com is free to use, though much like Zillow, you can pay for better placement.

Realtor.com scrapes MLS listings in order to build its robust database of homes for rent and sale.  (MLS is a service available to realtors that collates their listings in one place so people can easily find and search all the available properties.) 

Beyond its reliance on MLS data, Realtor.com also allows individual property owners to list homes for rent (but not for sale).  Much like the MLS’s from which they source most of their listings, Realtor.com is more focused on homes for sale, rather than homes for rent, but given that it’s free and popular, it’s worth your time to list your home there.

Craigslist remains popular with renters, though of course it doesn’t have the features and functionality that make the Zillows of the world so useful.  But it’s free and widely used, and so it’s worth your time. 

Beyond these mega-sites there are smaller players like HotPads, Zumper, and PadMapper – we encourage you to investigate them all, but if you’re trying to cast the widest net possible, we recommend looking at platforms like Avail that automate the process of cross-listing your home across several platforms. 

Avail also allows you to manage each listing and lead from a single portal.  In terms of getting your listing out there, it’s really a terrific option.  The best part?  Most of the key functionality is available through the free version of the service.   

Remember: it’s not only important to familiarize yourself with the pros and cons of each of these platforms; it’s also critical that you see the kind of language, images, videos, and other marketing material landlords and realtors are putting on these sites.  That way, you’ll be much better prepared to take the next step in the process of marketing your home!

The beauty of Belong is that we do all the work for you; we identify which platforms are most relevant to renters in your area, create and syndicate the ads, and pay to have them boosted if necessary.  Not only that, your home will be listed on Belong’s website – a service we only extend to homeowners on our platform. And once prospective residents start reaching out about seeing the property, we schedule and show the home for you.  So you don’t have to worry about anything except cashing the rent checks when they start coming in.

Step 2: Create great marketing collateral

Now that you’ve familiarized yourself with these platforms, it’s time to start advertising your rental. That means cleaning the home, taking photographs and videos, and writing copy for the ads themselves that makes your property feel unique and special in the marketplace. We’ll take you through the process step-by-step.

If your home is still occupied by your previous residents – which could be you! -  it might be impossible to declutter and clean, but if you’re officially between leases use the downtime to your advantage.  A clean room with bright white walls feels open to endless possibilities; it invites potential residents to imagine what it would be like to live there.  Not only that, but the combination of bright lights and a high-definition camera might make dust that much more visible in your photographs, which can make your home seem dirty. 

As is the case with the first piece of advice we offered here, it’s really a matter of showing your home in the best light.

Now that you’ve taken care of the inside of the house, it’s time to take care of the outside.  It might not be cost-feasible to give it a new coat of paint, but doing touch-up work on problem areas is a great idea, as is making sure that the driveway is devoid of weeds growing through the cracks in the asphalt, cleaning the gutters, and washing the windows.  Also it doesn’t take a huge amount of money to do a little landscaping: some flower beds and boxes under the windows can are beautiful touches that can really make a home that much more appealing.  If there are residents still living at the home, ask them to remove any childrens’ toys that might be scattered on the front lawn, and also, if possible, to park their car on the street temporarily.  First impressions matter – in dating and house hunting alike.  So make sure your home is putting its best face forward.

Find out everything you need to know, do, and follow up on in order to successfully market your rental property to get your property leased (and loved)

If you're finding it impossible to find contractors to get your property ready to hit the rental market, you need this unique property management solution.

How To Get Your Home Rent Ready When Good Contractors Can't be Found

Landlords are as anxious to rent their homes as people are to live in them. But getting those homes ready for new potential residents is getting harder and harder, as quality contractors are impossible to find. 

Where have all the home renovation contractors gone?  

They’re working on bigger, more complex jobs, that’s where they are! 

Thanks to the boom in new houses being constructed — along with an unprecedented number of renovations — we’re in the middle of a major labor shortage. There are more than 300,000 jobs in need of good, reliable craftspeople right now.

That makes finding help for smaller projects very challenging, to say the least. If you’re looking to get your home ready for the rental market, and you don’t have access to vetted professionals, this puts you in a tricky spot. You want to get your home ready to attract the ideal resident, but every day your house sits empty with no one to love it means you’re missing out on income. In this case, the cliche is true: Time is money.

You might have an impulse to put the home on the market as is, but this could also be leaving money on the table. A house that looks rundown or is not up to the standards of the neighborhood won’t bring the income it otherwise could.

Belong has an alternative to hunting for contractors

So what’s the alternative? How do you find great help, when help is so hard to find? How do you get your home fixed up ready to bring in as much income as possible, as quickly as possible?

By putting your Belong concierge on the case. Belong homeowners get instant access to over 10,000 professional contractors across our extensive vendor network. They’ve been in the industry for years and are the best in the business — experienced handy people that know how to care for a home and make it lovable.  From bathroom remodels to adding a new backsplash to a perfect fresh coat of paint, point them at a problem in your rental home and they’ll take care of it!

How do I rent out a property as a landlord, but live far away? Do I need a property manager or can I manage myself? We answer FAQs on owning interstate rentals

Long-Distance Landlord: How To Manage a Rental Home From Afar

Whether you had to move for work or picked up a steal of a property in another city, it’s not uncommon to live far away from a home you rent out. Even more so in 2024. With many homeowners holding onto interest rates too good to give up, renting out a home is often a better option when opportunity knocks in another city. 

This is why we get asked so often, “How do I rent out a property when I live far away?” 

Particularly if you’re considering the DIY self-management route, there’s a lot to consider before taking on the challenge from another state. It’s not impossible, but here are six questions to consider first. 

6 questions to consider before self-managing a rental home out-of-state

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