912 Graham Avenue is an 8 bedroom 3 bathroom student rental. With renting to the student market 912 Graham must be rented at a certain time of the year to maximize the rental income. That certain time is October through December. This house rents for over $33,000 per year, so if you miss on the timing, the costs is thousands of dollars. The 2013 – 2014 rental season we were getting poor response. We used Facebook advertising to target student aged persons and got some additional apartment showings from Facebook. Our website found an interested student that actually signed the lease though (he could have just as well been nabbed from Facebook though). He came by himself and looked at the house. He liked it and posted our video tour of 912 Graham on his Facebook account. He had all of his roommates view the video on Facebook. They liked what they saw and applied to rent the apartment with just what they saw from the video. Their applications were approved. We met later at the house. The applicants did a real quick walk through the house as verification of video. Then we went directly to our office and signed a lease. After signing the lease, we post a “thank you” on Facebook. This thank you has the first names of the person that signed the lease and a photo of the house. The house photo has the red letters “rented” across it. This “thank you ” posting on our Facebook account was viewed by friends of the new 912 Graham tenants. They liked our post and commented, “…you are now world famous…” and this comment went micro viral through their Facebook friends. The date we signed the lease was Jan. 20, 2014.
John Moss
Eau Claire, WI
April 3, 2015