It’s a fascinating time in the rental sector as we are seeing some areas of the country inundated with rental demand as people look to move to a new location.
The feedback is that some are doing this for a tree change or sea change; some are altering their living arrangements as flatmates are moving in/out; and some are selling now and renting until they feel the time is right to buy again.
However, this isn’t the same story in all areas. When there are more people moving into one area they must be coming from somewhere! Therefore, somewhere there is a shortage of prospective tenants. Conveying this information to a landlord can be difficult, and this becomes our challenge to help a landlord to adjust quickly to a rapidly changing rental market.
Many Property Managers will have clients with whom they have built up a level of trust in their relationship which will make this process easier to handle. If the market value of the property is less now than what it was 12, 6, or 3 months ago, you could tell them to adjust and they would accept this so that you can work quickly to minimise the vacancy. If only we had the privilege of time to be at this level with everyone, Property Management would be much easier.
When we need to help a more challenging client through the vacancy process there a number of elements we can focus on:
What is the feedback we are giving? How well does the landlord understand the current market, and how well have we conveyed this to them. If the property isn’t moving, it can usually come down to three elements which we call the three P’s: Property, Presentation, Price.
If the Property is good, and no work needs to be done we have a good product to sell. If the presentation online looks appealing to a broad audience, we will capture everyone looking to rent a property similar to what we have. If the property is presenting well in person, we enhance our chance of anyone viewing the property wanting to apply. If these first two P’s get a tick, you can only be left with needing to review the Price as any property is only worth what the market is willing to pay.
_________
Your Property Management training experts
