I am renting out the flat in London from abroad and so far it has been ok. I made a mistake this year by posting the ad too early as my tenant changed his mind on move out date. (he was planning to leave earlier). So my move in date is end of August and I usually like to advertise 1 month ahead. So I missed the opportunity of being “just added” when the prime time will come for people to look for flats at the end of July. I also found rent calculator very misleading. as once I add extra details it gives me 200 pounds more than without the extra details. So I think I overvalued the flat too. I am thinking of stopping the ad and restarting in 2 weeks with a lower price. Any tips please?
Personally I think the potential benefits of pausing ad for 14 days would be better.
Reducing price doesn’t look great.
I believe though ad needs to be off the market for 14 days before rightmove treats it as new and flags it accordingly and sends it out via email as a new property again.
I regularly reduce asking price. ‘Trying my hand’ to test the market at a higher rate, and have no problem with telling applicants this is what I was doing. Thats business.
Thanks for your reply Mark. i read about this 14 day unofficial rule too. apparently even if rightmove wont add it as “new listed or just added” they will give a higher visibility boost. has this been your experience also? so if i want a new tenant to move in around 20 Aug, the right time to repost a brand new ad would be 4 weeks prior to that date ? people are divided on reduced price… some says it works well for tenants, others say no. my personal reaction is “oh there must be something wrong” too, but seems like some tenants like discounts
Based on my own experience, when I’ve reduced the price (after testing the market), I’ve had a much lower level of interest when compared to when I’ve priced it of “average” value to begin with.
I suppose I see the fee as low, and prefer to maximise reponse especially if I need to fill property quickly. Losing even a weeks rent is far more costly than a new advert fee, so I would pay again.
Of course I only have a small amount of “test data”, and market conditions at the time could have impacted.
I find 2 months in advance too long, I’ve had good results around 5/6 weeks ahead.
Thank you. Yes I did this last year. I agree. I advertised 5-6 weeks ahead and at the lower end of price, but got overwhelmed with really a lot of enquiries. So I was suggested perhaps I undervalued the flat. So decided to try a different approach this time. At the same time I went with Rent calculator of openrent and its very interesting. When I enter basic details is gives me 1690 but extra details (flat size, how much it cost, condition) the price came to 1900. I found this difference a bit too extreme, but decided to test out anyway. Not knowing that 2months old ad is not going to look good.
At the same time I agree I dont want weeks of void period.
So would you recommend to stop the ad for 2 weeks and relaunch in 2 weeks with a new price? And not use reduced price strategy at all?
Did you pause your advert in the end? Im looking at doing the same as we are going on holiday and wont be able to facilitate viewings. Id like the listing to be ‘new’ again when i reinstate the advert. The pause would be at least 2 weeks.