I’m cruising craigslist looking for a 1 bedroom apartment. Typically the large corporate-owned property looking ads, will go to all the trouble to list pictures of the units, the address, pictures of the outside etc and list NO PRICES.
I’m sure there’s a reason for this, but what could it be? It seems like they would just waste a lot of their employees’ time with people like me calling to ask them how much the units are, finding out they are too expensive for them, and hanging up.
I don’t even bother asking how much the units are because there are too many places that respect my time by telling me how much the unit costs upfront.
My best guess is that the units are expensive and aimed at people who do not care about price, and it’s a weird way to keep the riff raff out (but I see even a lot of dumpy places doing this, so I dunno…)
It is possible that the rates vary depending on their vacancy rate (or vacancy fill rate) and they do not want to be held to a particular price. I do know that in large rental properties, rates will vary considerably depending on when a particular unit was rented.
Because that needs updating more often than a “call for price” and also it would make it relatively easy (in some posting sites, completely straightforward) to check whether the price has gone up or down.
Now if you ask me why some people post an ad and don’t update it in 6 months, that I can only ascribe to a certain inability to figure out what do people look for.
One add fits many apartments. 1, 2 3, or 4 bedroom. 1, 2, or 3 bath. Also ground floor units may rent for more than mid floor and of course the top floor may be more. Units with a view with out. Or parking?
I do agree that not putting any kind of pricing is a pain to the customer.
They are hoping to:
-convince you to tour the place, so you’ll fall in love
-size you up before offerings a quote
-get you on the phone so they can up sell or offer discounts depending on your enthusiasm level
-give you the low down on what units are available in your time frame.
In the Seattle Area, apartments can range from $600 to $2,000+, I really can’t picture someone who would be willing to spend $2,000/mo wanting to live in a place that costs $850/mo and vice versa. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around a customer who would go on a tour of a place before evening knowing how much the apt’s cost, but I guess my budget is prohibitive compared to a lot of these places (I’m looking to spend around 800).
In general I can’t STAND businesses that aren’t up front about what things actually cost, and moving is a stressful enough experience, I don’t really see why anyone would bother calling (it’s 2013!!! THERE IS THE INTERNET WHO WANTS TO CALL A BUSINESS ANYMORE?) an apartment complex which hides their prices vs take their money to the easier apartment complex that lists a unit and how much it actually costs to see if it’s worth a visit.
Yes they would have to update the AD more often, but since they don’t, their phone is going to ring off the hook with a bunch of people calling who can’t afford their apartments, so I fail to see how there is anything in it for them to dance around the price like a shell game.
That’s what we want, though. As long as the phone is ringing, we know people are looking at the ad. If ad copy #1 gets us 100 calls and ad copy #2 gets us 150 calls, we know that running #2 is the better ad. Putting the price in the ad would muddle the call rate - is it our description of the ad that sucks, or the price. (For example, we once noticed that a new ad was getting fewer calls than usual. We reviewed the ad and only then caught a typo that said “duplex apartments” and not “deluxe apartments”.)
What the others say about multiple units and prices is also a big part of the issue. Some buildings have a different price for every single unit. If the ad runs a week, we can’t even guarantee that the unit we listed is still available… but we might have a different unit that just opened up. If we don’t list prices, we don’t have to explain all that - we just tell you what we have now and what we’re charging.
From what you’re posting, it sounds like you might be imagining a small landlord - someone with a day job and a life who would be annoyed by a lot of calls. But most apartments are actually owned by landlords who have dozens or hundreds of units and they have peons (resident managers or a management service) to answer the phone for them. For the peons, answering the phone is their job and a phone ringing off the hook means job security.
(To illustrate the owners’ perspective: I once had an owner who was frustrated by low call volumes tell me - a resident manager - to just go out into the street and start telling random people about the apartments. Fortunately, I convinced the owner that this was truly a complete waste of my time.)
From the perspective of a tenant in such an apartment complex:
The “management” and/or owners view the tenants as the real peons, whose only useful purpose on earth is to be the source of rent payments. Beyond that, management tends to see tenants as necessary nuisances.
The relationship between landlord and tenant resembles the relationship between employer and employee. Like an employer with his employees, the landlord prefers to have passive tenants who just follow the rules, keep their mouths shut, and don’t ask any questions or fuss about anything. They just want sheeple who will pay the rent.
So I assume that by not listing prices, they hope to weed out prospective tenants of the sort who ask too many questions about things that matter, like money.
This is what I don’t understand. Using your example, Ad #2 would get more calls because potential renters would be asking the price, but those 50 extra renters are going to be only people who would not have called if the price had been listed who would not be interested in the apartment due to price. To make Ad #2 superior you would have to explain/show that not listing the price increases the likelyhood of renting out the room quickly at the right price than just being upfront about the price. Call volume is not relevant. If your answer is “Stupid managers hate seeing people on the clock not doing mindless busywork” then that actually makes a lot more sense than anything anyone has proposed thus far IMO.
Maybe you are having a problem envisioning the types of ads I am talking about. They are not “come check out the Awesomehomington Apartment complex, prices range from $X-XXXX!” they are (at least pretending to) list SPECIFIC apartments that are vacant with pictures of a SPECIFIC unit, and neglecting to mention the price. THE KNOW WHAT THE PRICE IS, they choose not to list it for reasons arcane. Here is an example of a corporate-generated ad listing in my area that at least pretends to list a specific unit with no price (I’m going to try to find one right now, I bet it will take me less than 2 minutes-Yep not even a full minute):
The REALLY MADDENING part of it too, is that I searched for apartments less than $800 and found this one which has NO price listed and is probably more than 800. Craigslist is stupid and needs to fix that.
You don’t understand. The phone calls are a type of control feedback. You find out how many people are interested enough to call. Of course, the people calling may then no longer be interested once they have the price, but from a marketing aspect, that’s cool.
If you get tons of calls for the apartment, but noone likes the price, then this is telling you something: you are priced out of the market.
If you get no calls for the apartment, then you know something too: your ad sucks (ok, it could also mean that the market is saturated and noone is looking for apartments, but that’s just saying that your ad sucks for even existing).
Now, if you have the price in the ad, you can no longer differentiate between these cases: lots of calls might mean everything is alright. It might also mean that you are priced too low; no calls might mean that the ad sucks, or it might mean that you are priced too high.
Usually, you would have to go hire some people to try to figure out which is which. But, marketing companies cost a ton of money. And, you’ve got people sitting around answering phones anyway…so, you can see how a boss could get Ideas.
I recently dated a rental property owner and she has ranges of rent for each of her properties, and tries to get the maximum out of each tenant. So many phone calls would sound like this:
Caller: “How much is the rent?”
Her: “What are you looking to spend?”
Caller: “As little as possible”
Her: “Well, what is your price range?”
Caller: “Somewhere around $X”
If X is high in or above her price range “Sure, we can do that”
If X is low in or below “This property is a little out of your range”
That is my new favorite lead, so that they can wrangle every dollar out of a sucker makes sense. I would never play stupid games like that, and I’d never be dumb enough to reveal what I’m looking to spend before they tell me how much the apartments are.
This is one thing I like about the USA, generally things are a set price and there is very little haggling… I absolutely abhor haggling!
It’s about the psychology of sales. The more commitment you get from the buyer the more likely you are to make a sale. This is true even of little commitments like picking up the phone.
But, yes, part of it is that owners run ads and like to keep their people busy. An owner would happily generate 1000 unnecessary phone calls if it meant one less month’s rent lost.
This is a pretty typical ad, frankly. For starters, the apartment isn’t coming furnished when you rent it, and they’re not likely to set up staging for each individual apartment. These are photographs that were taken of one example unit when the building was constructed. They did tack an apartment number onto the ad, but when you actually call, there’s a good chance that they have other units available.
What xizor says about price is also generally true. In fact, I should have mentioned it… one of the reasons to not list the price on the ad is so that your own tenants don’t see it. “You listed this at $950, with a free month of rent, but I’m paying $1050 for an identical unit!” There’s no way that conversation is going to end well for the owner.
I’m just sayin’, I would not rent in a place that is named after my allergy meds. Strange name.
Also, IME, big corporate complexes like that tend to be real sticklers for rules but fairly slack on maintenance. My advice is to skip over any ad in this vein. Don’t even bother. Living there will probably not be a pleasant experience, unless you enjoy feeling like one of 300 other sardines living in a bland little box.
When I rented, I learned about places like this and stopped even scouting them. Instead, I focused on privately owned and by that, I mean, “places I could rent from people who only one this one rental property or maybe 2-3 at the most.” That way, I go more personalized service which allows the tenant to negotiate small points here and there. “I have dogs, so don’t give me a unit with nice new carpet. In fact, I’ll take the unit with the stained and worn crappy carpet if you’ll make a note on the outgoing inspection report that I am NOT to be charged for trashing the carpet.” I had that in a lease once. I could have set that gnarly carpet on fire and wouldn’t have lost my deposit over it because I’d agreed to move in on crap carpet, knowing my dogs and cats would thrash it anyway. I’d already paid a pet deposit, why take a financial beating twice?
Another thing you can negotiate with what I’d call small-time rental landlords is repairs. The AC goes out, so I call the HVAC guy and pay him, and then turn in the receipt with reduced rent payment. Landlady didn’t have to deal with the problem, I used her approved vendor/contractor, and I didn’t have to wait for her to get around to it to have the problem taken care of.
I got this email in response to an inquiry about a week ago just now, and they want me to (there was other stuff but I’ve cut the rest out):
"As soon as you can, please click the link below and go to the secure website to complete the free credit report (takes about 30 seconds)
Once you complete, I’ll call you once I receive the information from the credit company (very quickly usually).
DNS lookup says the domain was created May 25 of this year and is registered in Queensland, Australia. The owner of the domain used a privacy vendor to keep their name secret.
