How to Attract Quality Tenants
When you invest in property, one rule to follow is to invest in an every person property – a property that draws the widest range of potential tenants possible. The more people who want to rent your property, the more chance it has of being rented quickly. Greater competition from renters should also help you maximise rental income.
Even though most buy-to-let landlords understand this, many create a property that appeals to a specific target audience – young professionals, silver-haired renters, families, and so on. This naturally restricts your audience, reducing competition from tenant applicants. The result is longer void periods and lower-than-potential rental income.
However, there are a few features that will make your property appeal to almost everyone. You can make your property every person property by ensuring it includes these. The trick is to think about what it is that everyone wants from their home.
Invest in a Great Location
Okay, so this is the most important quality a rental property possesses. People want to live where they want to live. Where is this? Well, think about convenience. Most people want to live in a place that makes their life easier – where it is convenient. What does this mean?
Well, close to transport, for a start. Whether the tenant has their own car or not, they will want to get around with ease. Close to public transport increases appeal. A property within a 10-minute walk of a train station or a few minutes from a bus stop ensures that those easy transport options are available. A few minutes’ drive from a major motorway or access to the national motorway system is an attractive quality.
People also value their free time. Think about the things that people enjoy. Like dining out, a quiet drink with friends, a session at a gym, country walks, and so on. A property that is close to these amenities is attractive. You don’t want to drive for an hour after a sweaty gym session. Public parks are great for young professionals who jog, and young parents with children. You get the idea.
It’s the same with shops. Shopping close by is a must. Everyone needs an emergency pint of milk or loaf of bread. A close convenience store is… well, convenient!
So, rule number one of making your rental property an every person property is to ensure it is in a great location.
Provide the Household Essentials
What else is it that people want from their home? Think everyday living, and you’ll get the answers.
There is a movement toward co-living – apartment blocks that provide smaller living spaces and communal amenities such as laundry rooms. Laundry facilities are essential – so that’s a tick in the box. But many renters don’t want to share these essentials. That’s a tick removed from many people’s boxes.
In your rental property, make sure that you provide all the essentials that people need to live their daily lives:
- Heating and lighting
- A washing machine (and maybe a tumble dryer for wet winter days)
- Air-conditioning for increasingly warmer summers
- The home should have good internet connection and mobile phone reception (who has a landline today?)
- An oven and a hob for cooking
Providing all these essentials will ensure that your rental property has the widest appeal.
Include Home Technologies
Home technology is something that is increasingly taken for granted. It has slipped into our lives, and many people now take home technologies for granted. You could lose potential applicants if you don’t provide home technologies such as:
- Exterior video cameras
- Connected security (have you noticed how many adverts there are for remote security systems now?)
- Smart thermostats and lighting to decrease energy consumption
- A smart lock, improving tenant safety by allowing renters or tenants to issue unique access codes
Make sure that you emphasise the quality of the broadband connection – great broadband is a real advantage for buy-to-let properties.
Ensure Your Property Is Maintenance Free
One of the most appealing things about renting is that there is little maintenance for renters to do. Of course, the basic stuff like changing light bulbs and replacing batteries in carbon monoxide alarms is the tenant’s responsibility, but the bigger stuff rests fair and square on the landlord’s shoulders.
Many tenant applicants are wary of renting from landlords directly because they could have problems getting repairs and maintenance done. Tenants want to know that their repair requests will be answered quickly and their maintenance issues fixed in a timely manner. An individual landlord could be on holiday when the boiler breaks down in the middle of winter. Working with a professional property manager, you’ll never have this problem – and the tenant will have peace of mind.
In Summary
Ensuring that your rental property appeals to the widest audience will ensure that you benefit from greater competition from prospective tenants. This competition should help you obtain the best tenants, achieve the highest possible rent, and reduce void periods as your tenants stay longer.
Provide a property in a great location, with all household essentials provided and household technologies included, and you are most of the way there to offering every person property with the widest appeal.
The final piece of the jigsaw is to ensure that the tenant can live stress-free, with guaranteed repair and maintenance capabilities. Can you guarantee such a service? We can. Our landlord clients benefit from our repair reporting system. It’s easy to use, and available 24 hours per day. It allows us to assess the maintenance issue immediately, and then assign maintenance accordingly. We can have maintenance on-site almost immediately for the most urgent repairs.
Using Ezytrac gives our landlords’ tenants peace of mind, and gives our landlords the benefit of effortless property management. Isn’t it time you came on board? To find out how to contact Ezytrac today at +44 0 1522 503 717.
Live with passion
Brett Alegre-Wood