Video of apartments listings

The new website will allow apartment owner to post video tours of their apartments.  This will be done by embedding google video, youtube video, or wellcomemat video.  All of these site make it pretty easy to embed videos you post to their sites elsewhere.  I did a sample video of one of my apartments in Burlington Vermont if you w

Burlington Vermont Craigslist – apartments for rent

Burlington Vermont Craigslist seems to be the most common place to post apartments for rent in the area http://burlington.craigslist.org/, or http://burlington.craigslist.org/apa/ .  The problem I see with listing apartments on Craigslist is the fact that as each day passes your listing moves down the list.  Also, everytime a landlord wants to re-post an apartment they need to upload pictures again.  What a pain!  The other issue I see is that when people are searching for apartments Craigslist does not make it easy to search by the date the unit is available.  A lot of landlords try to rent their apartment well in advance.  The site I am working on will address all of these issues.  The question will be can I get people to use the new site?  We will see.  There certainly will not be any downside to using it.  It will be completely free and very user friendly for landlords and tenants.

Bookkeeping for landlords and property managers

Another resource I will be able to feature on the website will be an affiliate relationship with Quickbooks.  As a landlord I really like Quickbooks a lot.  It is very easily tweaked to be very friendly for landlords and property management.  It makes tracking rent really quick and easy.  It also allows me to quickly create a profit and loss on any individual apartment or building for any period of time in seconds.  This has proven to be a great resource when looking for financing.  Banks tend to really appreciate well organized financials.  Anyway, I will be able to offer Quickbooks for sale on the website at a discounted price!

Burlington landlord and tenant resources

Another aspect of the Burlington rental property website I am working on will be a couple of pages focusing on relevant resources for landlords and tenants.  I will post names of local insurance companies that handle investment property well, good Burlington area commercial lenders and mortgage brokers / bankers, and good trades people in our area.  The tenant resource page will focus on tenants rights, what to expect when renting in Burlington and other areas of Vermont, local school information, helpful resources for moving, etc.

Availability of apartments in Burlington VT for rent

Finding apartments in Burlington VT for rent is easiest done well in advance.  The majority of apartments, in my experience, turn over on June 1st.  The second most popular date is September 1st, and last is probably January 1st.  This all seems to revolve around the times that demand for housing is highest and there are the most renters out there looking for apartments.  This also jives well with college semesters.  Some landlords in Burlington VT are renting apartments for June 1st as early as November the prior year!  Most apartments probably rent between January 15th and May for a lease beginning June 1st.  As a general rule, if you are a student looking for housing you will have the largest, and best selection available to you if you start looking early.  Happy apartment hunting!

Finding apartments for rent in Burlington Vermont

One key piece of the website I am building is an innovative homepage.  We have designed a unique and very SIMPLE homepage that allows a user of the site to do a great deal of research from the homepage.  In fact, the homepage concept is such an innovative way of searching that we have made functionality our primary objective and are not focusing on making it pretty…  From the homepage you can search deep enough to look at only apartments that meet very specific criteria without scanning through a ton of listings.  For example if you are looking for a 2 bedroom apartment in Burlington VT that is available September 1st, and allows dogs, you can see if there are any available quickly and easily.  Then you can view all of the results on a map view to check out the locations.  If you find one you like you can send an e mail to the landlord with questions, or complete an application online.  I can’t wait to launch the site it is going to be different and innovative.

Understanding tenants rights in Burlington Vermont

A good resource for tenants in Burlington Vermont to learn some of the basics about renting in Vermont it the Renting in Vermont handbook.  Check it out:   http://www.cvoeo.org/htm/Housing/tenants/Renting_in_VT.html

It is hard to get tenant feed back

I have been getting a lot of positive feedback about the direction the creation of this website is headed from landlords.  I have not received any feedback at all from people currently renting or planning to rent.  I think they likely do not have any interest in these topics and this tye of site creation until they are looking for apartments.  I am going to e mail some of my existing tenants to see if they would be willing to provide some thoughts as to what is important from their perspective.  Ultimately to be successful this site needs to be a good experience for both tenants and landlords!  I think tenants and landlords/property managers likely want the same things for the most part, an easy to use, well organized, efficient, simple site that gets results.  I think we are on the path to be able to offer that.

Burlington apartments website domain name…

One big piece of the picture in terms of the Burlington apartments website I am building is the domain name.  I have been trying for a year to find a good name.  Unfortunately, it is big business for people to buy up domain names they don’t intend to use and resell them for ridiculous money.  You can register a domain name for like $8.00 for a year, then people try to sell them for thousands.  So, bottom line, I have been trying in vane to find a good domain name with no luck.  That said I would love any ideas any readers might have.  You can search on domain contender to see if a name is used.  From what I understand it is pretty important that it be a “dot com” name, not “dot org”, net, etc.  So a name pertaining to rental property, preferably one that is not focusing in one region so the site can grow beyond Burlington and Chittenden County.  I am at a loss, but still trying.  Thanks for any help!!  Nate

Burlington apartments rent for varying amounts in different parts of Burlington

Tracking what Burlington apartments rent for in different areas is one thing I plan to track.  It would be interesting to know what the average rents are in different parts of the burlington.  It should be relatively easy to track once Burlington landlords and property managers list their inventory.  It would also be very interesting to see what unit sizes are typical in different neighborhoods.  I will only be able to track the advertised price, but that should pretty accurately reflect the actual rents charged.  My first guess is that the “high rent district” would be a balloon between UVM and Church Street.  It seems like that is the most sought after location for UVM students and Champlain students, and probably drives that rents up quite a bit.  The rental survey done by Allen and Brooks is really the best place to get accurate statistics about local housing trends, but this shoud be interesting nonetheless.

This blog will easily integrate into the website being built.  That will be a great place for me to post things like what the rent trends are in different areas of Burlington.