Property is a competitive industry, but I believe it is an ‘and’ industry not an ‘or’ industry.
What I mean by that is more there is space within the property industry for one agent and another, it is not a case of one agent or the other and the same goes for landlords.
Multiple agents and landlords can enjoy success in the space without getting in each other’s way and, in fact, if everyone worked more cooperatively, the whole industry would grow.
That is why I have decided to release a free ‘advice for landlords’ series, not just for those landlords with whom I already work, but for everyone.
Because, ultimately my ethos, which is something I have instilled in my colleagues here at Rocket, is that we want property to be an attractive investment and for landlords to be profitable across the board, whether they work with us or not.
And so, our first piece of free advice for landlords is get your property on Rightmove and Zoopla when you want to find a new tenant.
This is essential to making sure you get the best price possible for your property and it is extremely easy for your agent to facilitate this.
These are the number one sites that tenants will look for properties and so if you’re not on there, you’re already entering the market with a distinct disadvantage in comparison to those who are on Rightmove and Zoopla.
Once your properties are on these sites, there are a few tricks of the trade you can do to make sure you find a tenant quickly.
Make sure that you have high quality photos of your property, as you only have a few seconds to catch the eye of tenants who are browsing online and ideally you want the main picture of the property to be an internal photo, not external.
Having a floor plan with measurements Is another good idea, because it helps answer frequently asked questions before the tenants can even think of them, for example: How big is the property? How big are the bedrooms? And having this information available online only speeds up the letting process.
A virtual tour can also be a nice touch. Here at Rocket, we do that automatically for all the properties we manage using a piece of software called Giraffe.
All of this is to make sure your property looks good on the internet, because a quality property attracts quality tenants.
And while it may be easy to let anything at the moment, when the market slows down, it will be essential that your property stands out.
There are also a few requests you can make to your agent regarding how your properties are listed on Rightmove and Zoopla.
If you’re not getting any enquiries, ask your agent to make your property a featured property or a premium listing.
Each agent gets a certain number of premium listings and it puts your property top of the search listings when tenants look for availability in a particular area. From experience, I have seen that this makes a huge difference and it almost always results in a boost of enquiries.
It is important to remember, however, that listing a property on the market is not a perfect science, especially when it comes to price, and agents will occasionally wrongly estimate the value of a property.
This is fine as long as you’re willing to be adaptable. If your agent isn’t finding tenants as quickly as you had hoped, ask them to move the photos around and perhaps even adjust the price.
When adjusting the price, make sure to reduce it by a minimum of at least 2% or the Rightmove and Zoopla algorithms won’t recognise it and your property won’t get a boost.
But, with the right adjustment, it can be very effective, for example we had a property a few weeks ago and we slightly reduced the price and immediately offers came in and the landlord ended up getting more than the reduced asking price.
So, landlords, be proactive and don’t let agent apathy leave your property on the market for months or alternatively, switch to a competent agent who already knows what they’re doing like we do here at Rocket!
Read part 2 of our free 'advice for landlords' series by clicking here!
