Get to know your landlords more

January 31, 2018

The value of Property Managers through landlord’s eyes.

realestate.com.au are passionate about property management, partnering with industry experts and continually investing in research to provide you with strategies to help you grow your rent roll and retain customers.

We know part of your job is understanding what a landlord needs and conveying the value you provide so you win the pitch and manage their ongoing re-lets.

We recently conducted some research to understand landlord motivations better.1 Here are some of the insights:

Insight 1 – Capital growth will make a landlord’s property investment successful

Despite receiving monthly rent and the tax benefits of negative gearing, the real money is in capital growth for most landlords.

“You don’t make money renting, you make money on the equity of the property. There has been such a huge increase in property prices that the equity has increased a lot. But there is also the cost of maintaining the property, the issues with tenants are massive”. Paul N, Lifestyle Chaser1

What does that mean for you?

  • Landlords need to see value in spending money on their property as they’re not getting a big return each year.
  • To maximise landlord’s capital growth you need the best tenant looking after the property.
  • The wrong tenant can seriously cost you.
  • Once they have a good tenant they don’t all want to put rent up, especially if it may cause the ‘good’ tenant to move out. An extra $10 a week is $520 a year which is often less than the costs of re-advertising and having the property empty between tenants.

Insight 2 – No surprises here – all landlords want a good tenant

Your ability to pick a good tenant is highly valuable to landlords.

Two key insights we received from our research were:

  • The main concern that keeps landlords awake at night are tenants.
  • Almost 1 in 5 have had a significant problem with tenants.

Being able to draw out and understand your landlord’s fears of tenants and then demonstrating how you can help can be a great advantage. They’ve all heard a horror story even if they haven’t had one.

Things you could mention:

  • If you have a bad tenant it’s really hard to get them out.
  • Your experience gets the landlord the best tenant. This can always be backed up by quoting your low arrears, all of bond returned to tenants and no tribunal cases, if these things are true. Plus you can explain your reference check process.

Insight 3 – Landlords are looking for good advice

Landlords are open to your advice when helping them prepare their property to attract the best tenant.

“I want a Property Manager that gives me good advice… what’s a good tenant. Recently she gave advice on little updates we could do to increase the rent and to get a better clientele”. Chelsea D, Savvy Investor1

What this means for you:

As you know your local market, you’ll know if the property is up to scratch and will fetch the rent the landlord is after. But they may not know all other 2 bed apartments in the suburb for the same weekly rent have a dishwasher, but theirs doesn’t. If you see a way for your landlord to improve, let them know.

Insight 4 – Landlords want good communication

No doubt you’re flat out in your job so need to be clever with your time and how you communicate.

Nik A, Actively Involved1 told he wants “Someone who will contact you at least 2-3 times a year. To give you updates, someone who is open and honest. And who just follows up on what they say they are going to do”.

What does this mean for you?

You need to know your customer – get to understand their needs and so you know what information they might like to hear and how often they would like to hear from you.

You have the opportunity to set expectations upfront on when you’ll communicate.  If they only want to hear from you a couple of times a year, let them know you’ll be in touch after a routine inspection, rent review or when a lease is up for renewal.

The good thing is they do not always expect to hear from you always by phone, but if they have phoned you, not returning their calls will annoy them. On the flip side, they also appreciate not hearing from you is a good thing. It means nothing has gone wrong!

They also know you don’t check in with the tenant all the time to see how they’re going as this just opens a can of worms for them to ask for unnecessary things or maintenance.

Insight 5 – The good tenants will find your property through good marketing

Flashing back to the horror stories you’ve experienced or heard, you know you don’t want them. Good tenants will get snapped up quickly so you need to position your landlord’s property so it attracts all the best tenants.

78% tenants search online and head straight to realestate.com.au when looking for a home2

and

56% of tenants don’t go past page 1 when searching the rent section3

What does this mean for you?

Did you know realestate.com.au have advertising options which let your property stand out higher in search results? This helps ensure the biggest pool of prospective tenants see your property first and apply, to help you find the best one.

Try our brochure mock up tool where you can personalise a brochure with your branding, suburb data and photos to share the property listing with your landlord during a pitch.

Here are links to other realestate.com.au tools you might like to use:

1.     1form listing presentation reports – who’s applying for properties in your suburb

2.     The perfect rent listing – what determines if a tenant will turn up to your OFI

3.     Landlord styles research – check where your landlords fit with tips to build stronger relationships with them

In summary, we want to help you find the best tenants.

This leaves you more time to do the basics better – giving you a greater chance to be proactive occasionally to keep your landlords happy.

If you’d like to talk to a realestate.com.au representative give us a call or we can call you. We can share research statistics and tools plus some of us are landlords too.

Landlord Qualitative Research, July 2017 – managed by Forethought Research.
Residential Consumer Property Seeker Report, Nov 2016.
Adobe Analytics, July 2015 to June 2016.

IN THIS ARTICLE:
Residential Property Rent Roll Operations
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