My current listing stands at 86 enquiries. All enquiries have been responded/answered from me with no outstanding messages, viewings etc.
I am experiencing many tenant enquiries which either do not respond to my messages, fail to turn up for viewings or just cancel after a viewing has been confirmed and hence the high number of enquiries without finding a successful tenant.
As it would appear there are many ‘time-wasters’ enquiring, I do not necessarily want the advert to pause as a suitable tenant may still not have been found even at 100 enquiries?
Furthermore, I am looking to reduce the price on my advert and I will probably reach 100 enquiries in total shortly.
Just wondered if anyone has experienced this (most probably!) and what happens in this situation?
Auto-screening is on but this is somewhat a false security measure. I’ve had a fair few benefit tenants enquire with either little or no income and this is bumping the numbers of unwanted enquiries up which obviously isn’t helping the situation.
Hi mark
I had this happen to me a couple of weeks ago. Placed the property on the market had 100 requests within 2 weeks 90% were time wasters who didn’t bother to answer my screening questions despite being chased to ensure they hang just missed the memo. 5% weren’t able to meet affordability 5% had various “risky” elements who were offered a viewing but didn’t meet the mark and so were rejected. I ended up having to pay to relist the property however second time round had a far better calibre of tenant enquiries 29 in and already had 15 potentials after a couple of days. The selected couple are currently going through referencing.
Open rents 100 cut off is a joke and a way of getting more income. If the counter restarted for every declined enquiry then it wouldn’t be so bad but once someone enquires regardless of suitability they clock up your 100 total. I even had 2 people apply for the property twice so clocked up my counter twice over just under their partners name despite being declined.
Open rent seriously need to address their 100 marker
If the quality of the applicants is below what you are looking for, I think increasing the asking rent. rather than lowering it, will help to attract better quality tenants? You could always lower the rent later once you have found the tenants that meet your criteria? I also always use screening questions and carefully review the criteria (eg no families, students etc depending on your property suitability) this helps to reduce the number of applicants.
Spot on and this is the absolutely main reason that I require a deposit. If they can’t get a few hundred pounds together, I do not want them in my life. 99% of my tiny overheads are very clearly down to fair wear and tear. Likewise I advertise with slightly higher than true expected living expenses to eliminate people who are broke.
However, the lower number of respondents still behave in exactly the same way.
I found SpareRoom much better but I do not know why.
But it is still the case that if an applicant contacts me via the web site, asking to view the room and I respond asking them to ring me to arrange this, 90% of them never contact me.
Openrent produced not one single actual conversation. 100% failure.
Absolutely bizarre! They can’t all be too frightened to make a phone call.
Some others have stated that they will ring me and never actually do.
I have asked those who become my tenants why people behave like this and they tell me that, like myself, they have no idea.
Don’t understand why you would arrange individual viewings, just do an open event and tell people that’s the time for viewing. So many time wasters in this world, don’t give them an opportunity to mess you around.
I posted an ad on Open rent on a Friday. I signed in to respond on Monday AM, (I don’t work w/e), Openrent had already emailed me to say they intended to shut down the ad as I had not responded. I had to email them to say the property is stil available. I have auto screening but 70% of enquires still wouldn’t pass our referencing procedure. Monday through Thursday I contacted the remaining 30% to offer viewings, arranged 12 viewings for Saturday openday, edited the description to reflect that viewing spaces were full. It took me about five hours of office time because I do additional screening by phone so as not to waste anybodies travel/time. So today Openrent closed the enquiry and cancelled all the viewings I had arranged because overnight viewing enquires went from 80 to 103. This is the third time this has happened to me. I am already at the top of the market value for the area. I don’t think 7 days is an excessive turnaround time. Openrent never seem to read email enquires properly so responses are useless and never return calls.
I always offer to ring them if they wish me to and just send me a number to ring. I have never heard a thing back on OpenRent. On SpareRoom I sometimes exchange one or more messages but almost none produce a number to ring or ring me.
Of the ones that eventually do talk to me on the phone, some become my tenants and stay a year or two, and others reveal something that they have not put on their personal advertisement, if they have one, such as the fact that they have things like spiders or expect to keep rabbits or rats etc in their bedroom in a house share.
Others have not reached the point of a telephone because they suddenly announce having not read the advertisement beyond the first line that they need to move in right away rather than in two months time.
I note that at least a dozen others who have not responded at all have been advertising that they are looking for a room for over six months.
I had one yesterday who is clearly desperate, send me a message to ask if the council tax was included in the rent. I replied that the answer to his question is in the advertisement and cut and pasted the first half of the advertisement which contained a detailed breakdown of half a dozen costs plus a total of the living expenses, and sent it back to him.
I had another who did actually get to speak to me yesterday who was very clearly desperate having just realised after two years in student accommodation in Southampton, that their is absolutely nowhere in the city for him to live. I asked him just how he was going to get from the rental property back down to Southampton and it was immediately very clear that he had absolutely no idea. But he did offer me more rent despite the fact that he would be homeless several weeks before the room come available. (I turned him down flat). I have another who has written to me several times that claims to have a very large budget but cannot raise £500 for the deposit.
Even after 14 years at this, I find all this behaviour utterly baffling.
By the way, my response time is immediate or within hours seven days a week. I am right at the bottom of the market in terms of total living costs and at the absolute top of the market in terms of value for money. I do this in order to minimise voids. In 14 years I never had a single night void until Covid hit and people thought, incorrectly, that they were not allowed to view property or move home.
I note that the income of young people has fallen a lot but they tend to run expensive cars which I could but don’t.
Same issues here for the past 2 weeks. People enuire without it seems reading a word of either the advert or the pre-screening questions. Now on my 2nd ad (soon to be 3rd) because of the quota. Support are just as bad at reading as the applicants, ignoring what I write and just giving standardised responses. The quota is apparently there to stop data harvesting (whatever that is), but I can still have 10,000 enquires, just only through multiple copies of the same ad. Stupid.
Do you have to buy a new advertising package every time you reach the 100 limit? I’ve not experienced this (my last advert was a couple of months ago for a property in Nottingham although the vast majority are in London and I’ve not seen those enquiry numbers). I’m curious - whereabouts is your property in that has a such a high demand?
I collate my email prospective tenants every couple of days and make a list of them.
Then, I call them to discuss their circumstances and I find that I discount about half of them on that telephone call.
I say that I’m arranging a Block viewing ( which, by the way, I do ) but just don’t tell the No-hopers when it is.