If only finding a tenant were as simple as uploading some smartphone photos of our property on the internet.

Some property managers make it sound this easy… I call these property managers debt-collectors. They sit back and do little other than charge a % just for collecting your rent!

They expect tenants to come to the property, whereas a real property manager hunts for a tenant for your property.

I believe all landlords are entitled to the hands-off, feet-up landlord experience

I believe all landlords are entitled to the hands-off, feet-up landlord experience, given they’ve done the hard work of saving for and securing a property. So, if you haven’t leased your property yet, this is the post for you.

I’ll run through our Sydney Listings diagnostic tools for when a property hasn’t leased straight away, and what you can do about each type of problem.

Reason 1 – No views or enquiries online

If no one is seeing the ad for your property online, then no one will enquire or show up to inspect your property. This means no one will lease it any time soon.

First, always check how many views your property ads are getting on the internet.

How to check the number of views on your property ads

This is simply done through the back-end of realestate.com.au, domain.com.au, or any other listing portals you are using to rent out your property.

There’s a few examples below.

Domain.com.au Example

In this example the green line shows the property views, and the light blue shows the views of similar properties on the market at the same time.

What you can see is that there are not a high number of daily views (usually less than 10 per day) but that this is consistent with the market.

Realestate.com.au example

In the realestate.com.au example during the COVID-19 downturn, even though the total views (red) are lower than the market comparison (grey), they start off quite high. 75-100 views in a day is definitely a lot, and should be generating enquiry.

What to do about low views

In this green highlighted section of the analytics, the views are a bit lower. What could we do to increase the eyeballs that are seeing the property?

1. Price a property accurately from Day 0 … this doesn’t sound helpful, I know! But a good lesson when you are struggling to lease is to take advantage of the first week of advertising next time you’re on the market. Properties get more attention when they are uploaded to the internet. (Check out our book on the 6-steps to doing this)
2. Pay for upgraded advertising– on both realestate.com.au and domain.com.au, you can pay to have your property ad show up higher in the list of search results. The upgrade cost varies based on suburb, but will always be less than a week of rent, so it can be worthwhile.
3. Revise Pricing Strategy – tenant searches filter out for their desired price. This means that by lowering price, you might appear in more searches – whilst normally a last resort, it is better to do this sooner rather than later.

Hint: Take special care of ’rounded numbers’. For example, tenants are more likely to screen a search for “$500-$550 per week” than say “$495-$555 per week”… so make sure your property isn’t narrowly missing out on search parameters!

Reason 2- Views but no enquiries

In the above example, we are getting a lot of property ad views, but not as much enquiries or property page views (people clicking into the ad).

As pointed out my book (The PROVEN Strategy to Leasing Your Property In ONE WEEK), our first job is to sell the click, not the rental application.

To get people interested in the property as they scroll online, we need a well-presented hero photo showing off an amazing part of the  property, as well as a competitive price.

The photography and the display price work hand-in-hand to sell the click. So how do we remedy this?

How to increase enquiry and inspection levels

1. Quality online advertising – photography is the most important part of this. For a rental property, you shouldn’t need to spend more than $120-150 on quality property photos that can be re-used for years.
2. Box Brownie – Paying around $40 to virtually stage one photo with furniture, will make your property stand out when potential tenants are scrolling online. Click here for Box Brownie.
3. Pricing Your Property – this is explained here. If you need further help, contact us to help price your property more accurately.

Reason 3 – Busy open homes but no applications

If people are enquiring as well as showing up to inspect your property regularly, then there must be a good reason why it hasn’t leased yet.

There are two possibilities: Price or Presentation. 

In my book on the PROVEN Strategy I emphasise the importance of presenting your property like a luxury listing. 

This is important given that you are competing with other properties in the marketplace. If they are presented in a better and cleaner way, but are at the same price or slightly higher, you’re likely to lose out on the tenant.

Top tips for touching up presentation

1. Touching up paint
2. Improving natural or internal lighting
3. Decluttering the property

For more on property presentation, check out this video.

If price is the problem, that will become clear in the feedback from open home attendees via your property manager. You’ll notice lots of applications coming in low, attempts to negotiate, and complaints that your property is more expensive than others in the market.

Good luck and remember – stay hands-off, feet-up!

Keep the image in mind of the hands-off, feet-up landlord that you deserve to be. Turn that rental campaign around, and get your property investing path back-on-track.

In my book The PROVEN Strategy To Leasing Your Property In ONE WEEK we review the three-step process to pricing a rental property.

Step One in this Six-Step Strategy is of course “Accurate and Competitive Pricing”, and I discuss how pricing a property is not as difficult as most agents and property managers insist.

Sure industry professionals will have a bit more accuracy and speed. But with realestate.com.au and domain.com.au, you can get a pretty reasonable estimation on your own!

The below steps to pricing are what we will discuss today.

1. List the features of your property
2. Establish comparables
3. Rank by value offered

1) List the features of your property

For this we suggest you click and download the worksheet resources: Worksheet Pricing Your Property I Sydney Listings

Hint: This exercise is much better done when written out on paper. The reason is, our minds aren’t designed to balance so many factors at once.

When done on paper, it is a bit easier to see the full picture. This is important because you have to consider the property’s location as well as its other features.

Features

These include the number of bedrooms, bathrooms and car spaces, age, style, outdoor areas, access, aspect and more. The build of the property and the way it is set up will impact its value.

Location

Location, location, location. A property’s value will be impacted if it is close to schools, beaches, public transport, commercial areas, good amenities, shopping centres and more!

One useful factor to consider is the property’s walkscore – think about how much you’d like to live in a walkable area that is normally hard to drive around or park in.

A comprehensive list of features is provided in the worksheet! Here it is again: Worksheet Pricing Your Property I Sydney Listings

2) Establish Comparables

Now that you have a list of features, you can go identify a few properties that are comparable to yours. We will use these comparable properties to estimate the value of your own property.

Our first requirement for a comparable property is proximity. The exact same house as yours will have a completely different value if it was placed on the other side of the world.

Land has the most value, so ideally choose properties that are within 1-2km if possible. Remember, they must have similar location attributes.

An apartment on a main road might be within 500 metres of a waterfront house in Gladesville- this doesn’t make these properties useful comparisons.

The more features that match, the better the property is as a comparison. Ideally you would like four to five comparable properties.

Note, if you cannot find good comparables, use the Sydney Listings’ “Floor and Ceiling Method” instead. 

3) Rank by value

Weighing each comparable against your property, come up with a rank, for where your property sits in comparison to these. Using reasonable judgments, you’ll be able to come up with a useful price range. 

Congratulations!

You’re now on your way to the hands-off, feet-up landlord experience. Remember you can reach out to the Sydney Listings team if you need help with pricing your property.

Click here to check out upcoming examples on our youtube channel of the three-step pricing guide!

by Joe Wehbe. 

Do you need to have Landlord’s insurance? This is an important question to ask and an important conversation to have.

Reece Sammons on whether landlord’s insurance is necessary.

It’s not necessarily feasible for landlords in certain circumstances especially if they own a lot of properties. This is because continually paying lots of premiums will be more expensive than any out of pocket costs that can just come out of the excess rent. 

But if you’re a landlord who owns a small number of properties it is generally quite important for you to have landlord’s insurance in place. 

The first defence against any issues in the property caused by the tenants is of course the tenant’s Bond, but once the Bond is exhausted then that’s when landlord insurance kicks in.

It covers you as a landlord for anything that goes wrong above the tenant’s Bond. 

What is covered? 

1. Loss of rent
2. Property damage from storms
3. Damages from certain types of illegal activity

It is worth noting that landlord insurance will generally cover you for everything that home insurance covers and more, as it is specific to landlord needs. 

How much does it cost?

Of course landlord insurance ranges depending on the individual circumstances, but we have seen cases starting from as little as $350 to $380 per year. For most rental properties, a policy in this sort of range is an inexpensive solution to the range of potentially very expensive problems that can happen in a rental property. 

But what about my property manager? Don’t they protect my property and find me a good tenant? 

Arguably the best ‘landlord’s insurance’ is a property manager in many respects. At Sydney Listings, we take this perspective of our service particularly under our Contemporary Property Management model.

We take effort to screen tenants before securing them in our landlord’s properties. This is by conducting reference checks and gathering a wealth of supporting documents on an application. We also place an emphasis on pre, post and mid tenancy education of our tenants. Check out some of our videos here for instance to learn more. 

Conducting routine inspections is also vital to this process. But for anyone who knows people, knows that they are unpredictable. People change – in my experience I’ve seen tenants never be late in rent for years. Then suddenly everything changes and they fall behind following a change in circumstances!

I’ve seen perfect tenants turn and suddenly let things go at the end of a tenancy and present properties horribly when moving out. 

But why?

It’s a little thing called the human condition I’m afraid! Accountability goes away. Then people fall back to their own standards, rather than yours. We try everything we possible can to instil our high standards on to tenants for our landlord’s benefit. But it is impossible to do this completely, people remain too unpredictable. 

In my opinion the goal of Property Management is to reduce stress, reduce risk, and cover our fees so that we’re not really getting paid. We rather ‘take a commission’ from the money we save our landlords.  If we’re not doing that, then what is the point of having a property manager? You’re better of doing it yourself!

You may be someone who can’t withstand up to 2 months without receiving rent. Or settle a bill of more than $10,000 following storm damage. Then be aware that there are some things that a Property Manager or Contemporary Property Manager cannot protect you against! 

It is a good idea to understand how we’ve designed Contemporary Property Management to be a semi-landlord insurance policy by downloading this fact sheet. 

Who to use for landlord insurance?

Our official landlord insurance partner at time of writing is PI Plus who have a pretty strong commitment to protecting our landlords. But we are equally happy to discuss some other options who we don’t share a commercial relationship with. 

Terri Scheer for example position themselves as one of the forerunning brands in landlord insurance. If you have your own insurance broker, speak to them about what policies they can recommend as they will likely be the most aware of your individual needs.