With one in three Australians now renting, creating a great experience for tenants is more important than ever.
Renting is often the start of someone’s property journey, so it’s a great opportunity to build and nurture a relationship for the future, where they will buy, sell and buy again.
Finding the best tenant isn’t always easy, but with a clear strategy in place you can dramatically improve your chances of getting the right tenant and keeping your client happy.
Here are some tips and tricks to enable you to find those top tenants, and have powerful conversations with both prospective and existing landlords.
1 Get your digital footprint right
The window for winning the digital interview is short.
Most landlords decide who they want to look after their property within two weeks of researching.
This is a great reason to ensure your digital presence as an agency is strong.
Landlords are looking for information on things like recent sold prices, current rental prices/yields, as well as other investment properties for sale and general economic trends in the market.
Some key statistics you should keep in mind when promoting your property management business to new landlords are:
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- 38 per cent of landlords look for agents listing similar properties to theirs on realestate.com.au
- 25 per cent of landlords look for agents listing in the same suburb as their property on realestate.com.au
- 21 per cent of landlords look for agents with the best quality listings/photos on realestate.com.au
2 Attract the right tenants
Selecting the right tenant will positively influence landlord satisfaction, but landlords can be impatient, with 59 per cent stating that making sure their investment property was always leased out was a major concern.
This highlights the importance of finding the right tenant and getting them quickly.
So how do you attract the best tenants, and lots of them?
This starts with the marketing plan you implement.
Our role is to help landlords understand why it’s so important that they appear in the right places online, and that we’re presenting their properties in the right way.
Selecting the right tenant will positively influence landlord satisfaction, but landlords can be impatient, with 59 per cent stating that making sure their investment property was always leased out was a major concern.
Especially when our aim is to find them the broadest possible pool of good tenants to choose from.
It’s a competitive market for tenants looking to find the right property, and when they’re on realestate.com.au, they’re on a mission.
When creating your next listing, some key statistics to keep in mind are:
- 61 per cent of tenants will look at three or more properties before they secure one
- 95 per cent of tenants expect to see photos of the living room, kitchen and bathrooms
- 51 per cent of tenants want to see a floor plan.
The systems and tools you use to make it more convenient for tenants to apply and book for inspections will also play a significant role here.
The easier you can make the application journey for tenants, through digital solutions such as 1form, the more applications you’ll be likely to receive.
Landlords ultimately want to see quality applications on their property so they have the best chance of selecting the right tenant.
If you can deliver that, you’re proving that your strategy works, while building trust with them long-term.
3 Help quality tenants stand out
We know tenants feel that competition is tough right now, so we also need to educate them on what they should be doing to stand out and be selected.
More than three-quarters of tenants complete an online application, but we need to help them with things such as making sure they’ve updated their details recently, have listed the correct employer and previous property manager contact details, and supplied the correct ID documentation.
There are also new products available to help tenants submit higher quality applications.
One service that independently verifies rental history and identity documents to help them stand out from the crowd is realestate.com.au Tenant Verification.
It can also help you select quality tenants more quickly and easily.
Not only will you receive a physical tenant verification report, you’ll also be able to see which tenants are verified when you’re processing applications in 1form – meaning you won’t need to spend time or money running those checks yourself.
More than 11,000 tenants have bought this report since we launched in at the end of last year, so it’s likely you will start to see these as part of applications, if you haven’t already.
Having conversations with landlords about the importance of investing in the right marketing strategy, as well as making sure you’re using digital tools such as 1form to make the application process as efficient as possible for everyone, will all combine to create an amazing value proposition that will keep happy landlords coming back for years to come.
