Blog Post
We at Marterra Properties take great pride in our ability to push top line revenue for our clients. As property managers, we implement several leasing strategies to drive revenue for our clients. Although these strategies are simple, many of our competitors do not implement them, because they are more costly and require more work. In this blog entry, we explore some of the leasing strategies that we implement. We have increased rents by +40%, immediately after taking over a property that was previously managed by a competitor.
Marketing Channels.
We will begin our discussion on leasing strategies to drive revenue by exploring marketing channels. The market price for any rental property is the intersection of the supply and demand curve. While we can’t impact the supply of rental properties in the market, we can be a strong influence on demand. In order for a prospective tenant to “demand” a particular rental property, they must first be aware that the properties exist. This is the first step in the leasing process where we can add-value to our clients.
Some of our competitors (self-managing landlords) limit their marketing efforts to Craigslist and their own websites. We maximize your rental properties exposure by listing it on literally
hundreds of websites, including but not limited to: Zillow, Trulia, Apartments.com and Craigslist. Different tenant profiles use different rental websites, so we try to capture every tenant profile by blanketing your rental property on a diverse platforms. Every prospective tenant in the marketplace sees your rental property due to our multi-channel marketing.
Photos.
There are plenty of websites that document the history of bad real estate photos. My favorite is:
I can keep going, but I think you get it. Rental property photos have a massive impact on the first impression your property, because it is likely the first time a prospective tenant sees a rental home is online. As we all know, you never get a second chance at a first impression. So why do some landlords settle for such low quality photos? We firmly believe that investing in high quality photos lead to higher rents and quicker lease-ups. Below are photos from a property that we recently leased in Orange and one that we leased in Newport Coast.
The Application Process.
One of the things that frustrates us most about property managers is the way they show property. Their showing process is not designed to drive traffic to the rental property. Rather their process is designed to drive application fee revenues for themselves and to limit the amount of time they spend showing properties. The sad thing is, this process is common place in the property management industry.
One property manager requires prospective tenants to come into their office and pay an application fee prior to seeing the property. This process is burdensome and expensive for the prospective tenant and ultimately deters many from ever viewing the property. Our process is the opposite. Our goal is to get as many prospective tenants into the property as possible. Since more traffic means more demand for the property, we try to make it as easy and simple for prospective tenants to see the property. If the prospective tenant is interested in the property after seeing it, we send them an online application.
Showing The Property.
It is time consuming to show the property to every interested party, as a result, that is why most property managers try to decrease the number of showings and require the prospective tenant to come into the office first. One of the most basic, yet important leasing strategies to drive revenue is what we call the “mini-open house”. The mini-open house enables us as property managers to accommodate as many showings as possible while helping create a sense of urgency for the prospective tenant.
Generally, we schedule several mid-day open houses during the work week. These are great for service industry and retail workers who might need to work nights and weekends. We also schedule several mini-open houses weekday evenings and on weekends to accommodate the more traditional 9-5 hours of employment. By limiting the showings to several convenient time slots, we are able to schedule several showings at the same time. This helps create a sense of urgency with the prospective tenants. We have seen this sense of urgency lead to rental applications offering rental amounts above the asking rate.
Conclusion.
These leasing strategies to drive revenue really work. The results are undeniable. However, they require some additional work that many of our competitors are not willing to do. We are often able to raise revenue by 10-40% after taking over a property that has been managed by another competitors or self managed properties. Many of our clients find that the top line revenue growth we are able to achieve more than pays for our service.
Contact us
today to learn how our leasing strategies to drive revenue can benefit your investment property!