Market your property well, and review your asking rent regularly

During the leasing period of your property it is extremely important to always be reviewing the marketing, and also your asking rent. Little things can make a big difference, such as having good-quality photographs, including lifestyle photos. Showing prospective tenants the lifestyle a suburb or building can offer them can be a great selling factor. It is best to include a floor plan whenever possible. It’s no longer acceptable to have one photo as your marketing – people expect more nowadays, and how are you ever going to secure a tenant with minimal vacancy without implementing these simple ideas?

Your asking rent too must be reviewed and regularly. Look at what has become available in the area, what other styles of properties are you competing with – are they new, old, etc. Does your property manager make follow-up calls to all prospective tenants who attend their open for inspections or private inspections? What did they like about the property? What didn’t they like? This simple feedback is imperative information for all owners and property managers. If you don’t know there is a problem, how can you fix it?

After all your research you may realise the rent needs to be reduced. This can sometimes be a difficult conversation for some property managers to have, however you need to outline the true cost in the long term.

Isn’t it better to receive some rent rather than no rent? For example, if you are asking $400 per week but the going rate for similar properties appears to be $380 to $390 per week, by reducing your asking rent by $10 per week you will get $390 a week, a much better situation than receiving no income at all.

When you break it up further, that $10 per week equates to $44 per month, which in turn equates to $528 per year. The property would only need to remain vacant for another two weeks, and there goes another $800.As a Property Investor myself I know what I would do.

Leah Calnan is the director of Metro Property Management in Victoria and is the chairwoman of the REIV Property Management Chapter.