I have. Used openrent several times and am pleased and will continue to use it.
But:
I feel bullied when I am prompted to reply after 48 hours. I prefer to accumulate viewings and do several at 15 minute intervals on one day. This means I wait till enough time has passed to see some interest.
The options to mail selected groups of inquiries is inflexible.
The pause facility is not infallible. The ads revert to unpaused.
It takes time to get a good tenant on board. OR want to close the ad down after no time at all.
I strongly suspect they are keen to boast that lets happen quickly and because I chose to allow a week or ten days I am spoiling their statistics.
My last ads have received over 100 and 60 inquiries. I have no need to be rushed.
I normally respond to tenants within a few hours and arrange viewings within a few days. I try to arrange all viewings in the same day.
In the London market I find it’s unlikely prospective tenants are likely to not have found something after 10 days so waiting longer than a few days would be counterproductive.
I am priced aggressively so don’t usually get tenants that are unsuitable so no need for a huge pool of applicants.
The system is designed to consider both parties (landlord and tenants). Where you leave a tenant without a response for over 48 hours, as @Per mentions, they are likely to quickly move onto a different property. They are also left wondering “Is this property even available anymore?” and “Does this landlord still want a tenant” - without any response for a prolonged period of time, the tenant experience is far worse. In turn, this means the landlord experience is also worse as tenants won’t reply a week later and it will seem that the tenant was never interested, when in fact they’ve just moved on.
If you would like a little more time with each enquiry, or would like tenants to provide more information before responding, then you can try our “auto-reply” feature:
You could for example say: “I only respond to messages on Thursdays, and conduct viewings on weekends only. Please rest assured I will respond on Thursday.” - This would set expectations at least.
For most landlords, they move much more quickly than this, and respond to tenants normally in a few hours. As such, if you’re behaving differently to most other landlords, then it makes sense to keep tenants in the loop that your process is slower and they can decide if they’re happy to wait or move on.
The downside for you in not being responsive is that you will lose tenants along the way, and that is why our system tries to ensure landlords respond quickly and in a timely manner.
And just to be clear, the system is designed in this way because we believe it’s better for both tenants and landlords (more enquiries / better communication) rather than any attempt to prevent “spoiling statistics”.
Thanks for your response
I do in fact explain that I’ll be setting up viewing on a stated date. I also use auto response to preselect but many users dont really read the longish description etc.
Also while I privately do my own sorting I dont feel the need to eliminate people prematurely.
A better manipulation of group responses would be useful