With students and young professionals more likely to rent, especially with the onset of COVID-19, landlords and agents must understand how to attract renters. With homeownership falling from 70.9% in 2003 to 63.9% in 2018, the private rented sector attracts more renters than ever. Students, as well as young professionals, will most likely be looking into making your rental property home.
Our guide will show you how to attract renters to your property, from knowing your prospective tenants right down to how you can market your property effectively.
Know your target demographic
Good letting agents put properties in front of the eyes of renters. Great letting agents put properties in front of renters’ eyes and know how to compel them to book a viewing. To attract renters, you must create critical criteria for tenants, depending on the property you’re trying to let. Are they university students renting their first house or young professionals? How long do you want to let this property out during different tenancies? What key amenities are there in the property’s area?
With people starting to look towards renting rather than owning a home in our current climate, you must treat the property as a great potential home for tenants. Treating it as such will add personalisation to your service and attract renters faster.
Understanding who you want to let a property to is beneficial in decreasing void periods and letting your properties faster.
Create a great property listing
You know what you want in a target tenant. Now you can create a great property listing. Make sure you include all the key information that a potential viewer would want. Information about rent, the number of rooms such as bedrooms and bathrooms, and the location are vital.
By creating an informative and exciting description of the property’s features, its furnishings, and details about the area, you’ll acquire qualified leads and attract renters to your property. Letting agents should take high-quality photographs of the property, considering lighting and the space you’re presenting. You can also create a video walkthrough of the property so renters can see beyond the listing’s photographs and explore the house before going to a physical viewing.
Find a unique marketing angle
What sets apart letting agencies is how they market their properties up for rent. It’s not enough to list your property on an online portal and hope that a qualified lead will find it. Consider different marketing angles you could take to make your listings stand out and attract tenants.
One example of unique marketing that makes properties stand out is propertypal.com, a property portal based in Northern Ireland. They utilise several social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, to stand out from most property listings through short, witty captions.
The captions and images of the properties often gain several likes and comments tagging other users. These increase the visibility of available properties and attract renters across their social media channels.
Tailoring your social media goals to what renters want to see is only one unique marketing tactic. Letting agents can create free, valuable content such as blogs or vlogs to help renters searching for properties. You must analyse what’s best for your letting agency to attract renters, not what seems to be working for everyone else!
Consider timing
Watch out for the peak times of year when renters will search for properties. If you want to attract student renters, most begin their house hunt as early as October for the following year. Other peak times of the year include just after Christmas in January and right up until Easter. You should take advantage of the house hunt boom periods to source and secure quality student tenants.
When you provide excellent and trustworthy service for renters, this can improve your chances of receiving good reviews and for others to recommend your letting agency by word-of-mouth. These will help you naturally attract quality tenants to your agency.
Attract renters with Resooma
Listing with Resooma means we’ll expose your property to our student audience. From there, we’ll source the best quality tenants, meaning you’ll have decreased void periods, increased rental yield, and no hassle. Best of all, listing with us is free, meaning you’ll only pay when we successfully rent your property. Check out the other benefits of listing with Resooma here.