Can tech help letting agents persuade more landlords to sign up?
Street founder says too few agents actively prospect for landlords despite the average lifetime value of a landlord being £19,424 vs £8,317 for a repeat vendor.
According to research commissioned by Kerfuffle, the average lifetime value of a landlord is £19,424 vs £8,317 for a repeat vendor. So, what can letting agents do to boost their game and win more landlord clients?
Most agents are focused on finding and managing tenants on behalf of landlords and rely on word of mouth to grow their lettings portfolio; only a small minority actively prospect for new landlords.
While agents will engage with landlords at the start and end of the tenancy, many often don’t communicate during the tenancy to discuss rent rises, local market trends, the landlord’s portfolio and investment plans for the future. For example, our recent research shows that in the past 18 months, 29% of properties that have been relisted have not had a rental price increase. In other words, almost a third of landlords are missing out on additional revenue from their rental stock
Additionally, many Spectre Lettings clients are often surprised, once they have access to the data, how many of their existing landlords have other properties to let through competing agents. Armed with this knowledge, a portfolio review and a bit of extra attention is a quick way to increase their lettings stock.
As an accidental landlord with a BTL property in Manchester, I experienced this lack of communication first-hand from my previous managing agent. This type of poor customer care can also result in the agent losing the potential future sale of the BTL property.
Gathering dust
As a generalisation, Agents seem to be much more proactive when it comes to winning new sales instructions than marketing and prospecting for new landlords.
For the latter to be successful, agents need to implement habitual and consistent communications in order to generate results and catch landlords at times when they may be ready to make the switch. Many agents are sitting on a wealth of landlord information that is currently gathering dust.
The landlords that will have the highest return on marketing spend will naturally be those with more than one property in their portfolio. There are a couple of ways to identify portfolio landlords that aren’t already within your existing database.
The first of which is a manual process – using your database of landlords that you’ve acquired, you can cross-reference to identify those landlords who own multiple properties.
The second technique is more of an automated, streamlined process through an external proptech system, such as Spectre Lettings, which will automatically do this for you.
Whichever approach you choose, successfully growing a lettings portfolio comes from putting processes in place to ensure you retain the stock you have, whilst using the tools and strategies at your disposal to grow your business for the long term.
Heather will be speaking at this week’s Negotiator Conference in London.
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