The 7 Biggest Mistakes Landlords Make When Looking For Tenants
Are you worried about getting new tenants for your rental property? Do you lie awake at night, wondering why you can’t find the right tenants and find facing hefty mortgage payments daunting?
Finding suitable tenants quickly and minimising the time your property lies vacant is an essential part of making a success of your rental investment. Unfortunately, it’s a part that many landlords get wrong – they make blunders that mean their properties are left vacant for weeks, even months or fail to secure the right rental value.
So… what are the 7 Biggest Mistakes Landlords Make?
1. Advertising rental property in the wrong place. The best way of finding a new tenant and eliminating empty periods now and at anytime in the future is to ensure your property can be seen on the UK’s largest property websites. If you only use one form of advertising make sure it’s online advertising so that your property can be found by millions of home searchers on the biggest property websites. It makes perfect sense to advertise your property where tenants look first. It is a known fact that over 90% of tenants use the Internet as their first port of call when looking for property.
2. Setting the wrong price for the rental property. One simple thing to remember when setting your rental price is to make sure you’ve done your research. If you’re advertising your property at the wrong price, it’s likely to remain unoccupied. Managing an empty property could cost you thousands of pounds in mortgage payments. A good property offered at the right price will be snapped up within two weeks. So make sure your property is offered at the right price from day one if you’re looking to eliminate empty periods.
Here’s an example of the loss incurred when an overpriced property is put on the market. The market rate for this example is £180 per week.
Scenario 1: Property is let immediately at £180 per calendar week for a full year. A total rent of £9,360 is achieved. [£180 x 52 = £9,360]
Scenario 2: The property is offered at £200 per calendar week. After an eight-week search for a tenant the property is let at £200 per calendar week for a full year.
A total rent of £10,400 is achieved. [£200 x52 = £10,400] However because there was an eight-week delay in finding a tenant the rental must be averaged out over 60 weeks. [8 weeks without a tenant + 52 weeks agreement. £10,400/60 = £173]
So how do you carry out market research…
Market research can be carried out by visiting the following websites.
When you use property portals for your rental research, you’ll need to enter the first half of the rental postcode into the search facility.
When you’re selecting the rental property criteria to be used within the rental search, keep the information as close as possible to the property detail you’re researching, with the exception of the rental price.
To research the market rental prices for your area and property type put in a range of rental values, starting £300 below your anticipated rental price and £300 above your anticipated rental price.
The search results will give you an indication of similar properties that are available in that particular area of the UK and offer you a guide to the quality of available rental properties, the rental price of similar available and let properties, and the way that other properties are presented.
3. Not using images (or using the wrong images) in rental adverts.
Photos will attract a tenant’s attention. Using photos in your rental advert will help you to tenant a property 10 times faster. Ultimately it’s the rental price that attracts tenants but if you’re pitching your property among tens or hundreds of other rental properties at the same price it will be the photos that make the property stand out and attract the tenant’s attention.
When adding photos to your rental advert remember that tenants are most interested in seeing either a good kitchen photo or a good living area photo. This is the complete opposite to sales adverts and many professionals will tell you different. However it’s been proven that good internal photos tenant properties quicker than external photos. Tenants will normally only stay in the property for 12 months, so they’re more interested in the interior rather than the exterior. To attract tenants fast you need to appeal to what the tenants want and not what you or an agent think they need. It’s all about the tenants.
4. Giving a poor description of the rental property. Get the description basics right and you’ll be well on your way to a life with fully tenanted properties. Below is a list of the detail that tenants will be interested in when looking at your property advert. [At the viewing stage or sometime before, tenants will also ask about the council tax, utilities and any other additional charges they may be faced with.] Here are the details you must provide in your advertising:
Price, Location, Property type, Number of bedrooms, Furnishing type, Condition, Decor, Features of kitchen and living area, Bonus features, (e.g. parking, garage, views, swimming pool) Glazing type, Heating type, External features, Local facilities, transport links, and venues close to the property, broadband availability, walkscore and last but not least your Contact details.
5. Marketing the property at the wrong time. A new property is most likely to attract an offer in the first two weeks, providing that the rental price is right and the presentation of the property is as it should be.
The busiest time of the year for new tenants looking for property is between March and May. Surprisingly, January is always a busy time too, although that doesn’t last much beyond the second week. The January rush has been attributed to family disputes and couples splitting up over the Christmas period.
So what’s the worst time of year to market your rental property? The summer holidays can be very slow which can make the search for tenants a painful one. Most tenants are thinking about their holidays, and the last thing on their minds is searching for a new rental property.
6. Not allowing prospective tenants to get in contact quickly. When you want to arrange a viewing, the main form of contact between you and the tenant should be by telephone. Any other form of contact may result in the loss of a potential tenant. Emails and texts are fine but they are no substitute for a phone call.
If you offer a phone number in a rental advert always make sure that the phone will be answered or, at the very least, that there is an answering service. If you do receive a voicemail message, return the call as soon as possible to ensure a viewing time and date is arranged.
When creating a rental advert always check, double check, and triple check the contact number that you have offered. If the contact number offered is incorrect, the advert will not work no matter how good the property is.
7. Presenting the rental property poorly. When you show a prospective tenant around your property it’s crucial that it’s clean and tidy. Although they will understand that not all properties are kept in great decorative order all of the time, don’t imagine they have the ability to ‘overlook’ dirt and squalor. Even if the existing tenants are to blame for the mess, it will still reflect badly on you and the property.
Think of a viewing as job interview: to give an immediate and good first impression, make sure your property looks its best rather than scruffy and dirty.
If you would like to know how we can minimise your void periods and increase your rental values please speak to us.
Sources: Zoopla, Loft Interiors