Chicago Landlord

The rental market is going to be tough this year. Now might be the time to think about creating a sense of community for your building, after all your rental building is a tiny community. If your tenants feel like they belong to a group they will be more likely to stay and more likely to encourage their friends or like-minded colleges to rent in the building too. For example I have seen properties where almost all of the tenants are bikers/bike messengers. I heard of another example where the tenants were mostly deaf, this one was also near the El. If you can get a group of like-minded residents in your property then they will encourage others like them to move there too. This may be a hard to situation to create, but if you have one tenant who seems inspiring towards a certain group then that is the person to work with. You can offer referral fees to tenants who refer a qualified new applicant. The amount of money should be reasonable but should not exceed a month's rent total for the year. You can try marketing the property more directly to one group but be careful as this can sometimes get you in trouble with fair housing laws.