Tenant Placement Services in the East Bay

Renting out your house, condo, or unit but planning to manage it yourself? We’ll find and screen the tenant for you, and you take it from there. All East Bay Properties has placed tenants in Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville, and Richmond rentals since 2005. Our tenant placement service handles everything from the listing to the signed lease for a one-time fee of 75% of one month’s rent.

How Tenant Placement Works

1. We price and photograph the unit. We recommend a rent based on current East Bay comparables, take professional photos, and capture a 3D virtual tour that lets prospects “walk” the unit online before booking a showing.
2. Your listing goes everywhere renters look. Our AppFolio system syndicates your listing to 30+ rental sites, including Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, Apartments.com, Zumper, HotPads, and Craigslist.
3. We handle every inquiry and showing. Calls, emails, and showing requests come to us, not you. LISA, our AI leasing assistant, answers prospects around the clock, and we show the property 7 days a week.
4. We screen applicants. We check credit, income, and rental references using consistent, written criteria that follow fair housing law and the local Fair Chance ordinances.
5. You make the final call. We send you the completed, screened applications so you can make an informed decision.
6. We prepare and execute the lease. We use California-compliant lease forms, collect move-in funds through our trust account, coordinate the key handoff, and send you the signed lease.

Placement Only vs. Full Management

Example: On a $3,000/month rental, placement only costs $2,250 one time. If you choose full management, placement drops to $1,500, plus $180–$240/month for ongoing management.

See our full fee breakdown for everything included in each option.

Who Placement-Only Is Right For

• Owners renting out a home for the first time who want help finding the right tenant
• Owners who live nearby and are comfortable handling repairs and rent collection
• Owners who manage several units themselves and want to hand off leasing
• Owners who want to try professional leasing before committing to full management

If you live outside the Bay Area, or your unit is rent-controlled in Oakland or Berkeley, full management is usually the safer choice. The compliance work continues long after the lease is signed.

What East Bay Landlords Get Wrong at Lease-Up

The rent you set when you place a new tenant matters more in Oakland and Berkeley than almost anywhere else. In a rent-controlled unit, the starting rent becomes the base for every future annual increase, and those increases are capped: 2.3% in Oakland for August 2026 through July 2027, and 2.5% in Berkeley for 2027. Berkeley also makes a new tenancy wait through the rest of its first year and the full following calendar year before any increase. Pricing too low at placement is a mistake you live with for the length of the tenancy. That’s why we price from current comparables rather than last year’s rent.

Screening rules differ by city too. Oakland’s Fair Chance Access to Housing Ordinance prohibits asking about or considering most criminal history, and Berkeley has its own Fair Chance rules. A screening process that works in Emeryville can create liability a few blocks away in Oakland. We apply the right criteria for the city your property is in.