I use the Open Rent app on my Android phone to list and manage rental listings
I often get seemingly genuine tenant enquiries coming through. I’ll send a reply (sometimes instantly if I catch it in time) but then get nothing back. I’ll sometimes even follow up politely but nothing.
It feels like the messaging breaks down depending on the portal that the applicant uses to respond to the listing (Zoopla, Rightmove, etc) but ones through open rent work fine. I have no way of finding out.
Obviously it’s entirely possible that someone makes an enquiry then decides not to continue, but this happens a lot I feel.
Or they are AI generated bot enquiries to make me think I’m getting my money’s worth? How can I investigate further?
Lots of OR messages go to spam folder including notifications of messages from tenants and same will be true for them. If they are interested and not a bot they will persist but a non-issue if you get enough applicants anyway
Options:-
Contact the tenants using the tel or email details provided on their profile instead of OR messaging
Put a contact tel.in your auto reply message such as ‘if you don’t hear back from me please check your spam folder and contact me on this number’
Check your spam folder
Get a couple of friends to contact you in response to your ads, accessing via different sites, to test it’s working