Housing Complex

The Inauguration Rental Chronicles, Part 5: Tricks of the Trade

Posted by Ruth Samuelson on Nov. 25, 2008, at 5:24 pm

The Inauguration Rental Chronicles follows the epic story of four roommates as they seek to rent out their Northwest townhouse for a glorious sum while battling the tides of waning consumer interest, pie-in-the-sky expectations, and an untested and entirely unknown market.

Well it’s been a busy week of disappointment for our opportunistic friends. In the last Inauguration Rental Chronicles update, the grouphouse had received a response from the leader of a bunch of college students. One member of the house rapidly responded with a letter noting nearly every positive thing that existed between Columbia Heights and the National Mall.

Then she waited for her excited and gracious respondent to write back. She got nothing.

Time to go back to the drawing board. Soon after, the group reposted with a lowered price: $9,000, down from $10,000, for six days. Again, no response.

Time to go back to the drawing board once more. What was one tactic that hadn’t been tried yet? Numbers manipulation.

Instead of posting the entire sum for six days, the group wrote a headline that mentioned the price of each bedroom per night—So essentially their old headline including a sum of several thousand dollars, and their new headline included a sum of several hundred dollars. Which do you think would be more enticing?

Photo by Jimtimages.