Attracting the right tenant
With property, particularly in Greater London, being so high in demand, finding a tenant for your property is like shooting fish in a barrel! You don’t even need an agent to do that, you could advertise your property online and you will be inundated with enquiries. Sadly, a great number of those enquiries will not be from bona fide applicants, particularly as (as a private individual), you will not be able to market your property on the ‘go-to’ portals such as Rightmove and Zoopla; instead relying on other less reputable online advertisers.
For us, it’s all about finding a quality long-term tenant who will respect and look after your property and pay the rent on time each month. And that isn’t quite as simple and straightforward! That’s where we really stand out, with years of experience and expertise to guide you through the minefield that is finding the right tenant for your property. Other than our scrupulous filtering and meticulous vetting procedures, finding those applicants in the first place is key.
We make it our business to learn home hunters’ property searching behaviour. While we may occasionally have the odd person walk in off the street, 99.9% of our enquiries are online. Tenants will typically use Rightmove and/or Zoopla for their property search. Strangely, not all agents use both portals, but we do as we like to spread our marketing as wide as possible. We know that most tenants will register their property requirements with the portal. As well as displaying a shortlist of potentially suitable properties, the portal will send them new property alerts as soon as they’re listed. Next, the tenant will look through the shortlist, swiping through to the properties that catch their eye. This is called the ’click-through rate’. We’re proud that our click-through rate is much higher than average, and we put this down to our expert photography.
Our staff have been trained by The Property Photography Academy to take and edit professional images of the properties we market to let. Finding great quality tenants can be quite a challenge, but by making our properties look so attractive, the quality tenants find us!
Interestingly, most of us are ‘visual’, meaning that we rely on our vision as our dominant sense to make our initial decisions. That’s why it’s essential to have eye-catching photographs. But we need to keep their attention, so as well as the initial attention-grabbing image, we add a colourful floorplan and we will fill the listing with lots of appealing images of the property. We use ‘lifestyle’ shots too, which portray a sense of feeling, the other sense we rely on when searching for our home. These magazine-type photos may be an arty close-up of an ornament, some flowers or an attractive door handle. We use them as they attract those people looking for quality accommodation, as it matters to them to have somewhere nice to live.
The photo shoot usually takes between one and two hours, depending on the size of the property. Beforehand, you should ensure that the property is clean and tidy, looking how you want people to see it and how you’d like it maintained. It doesn’t have to be a show home, but remember we want our lovely tenants to continue their ‘buying’ journey to get in touch with us to view it. So, make sure the beds are made, the washing up is done and pack away out of sight any kids’ toys.
By going to these lengths, it gives us a better choice of potential tenant for our landlords to choose from. Once selected, we then go through the rigorous referencing and credit checking process, as well as guiding our landlords through the usual red tape and hurdles of legislation, deposit protection and contractual obligations.
For us, showing your property in its best light and portraying it as an aspirational home in which to live attracts the kind of tenants that will look after your property as they would their own. If you’re interested to learn more about our letting and management services, please contact our Letting Director, Sarah Beesley, you can contact Sarah here.