I’ve always had a really good response from OpenRent and had about 7 or 8 successful lets, this time I’ve had a about 25 enquiries in three weeks, as expected most are poor but at least the property is getting viewed, in the last 3 or 4 days I’ve had none at all. Previously I was told to have good housekeeping and reject any that were non starters to avoid compulsory screening, i’ve done this and only booked about 3 viewing. I’ve also got Pro photos so it’s not that.
I’ve had Connell’s in and they reckon the rent is about right and the property good, anyone gone with High Street and found a tenant straight away? I know it will be more expensive but as I’ll do all the referencing and AST they agreed a much lower rate, is it worth considering? If so should i take down the OpenRent Ad or keep it going, the agent doesn’t mind either way.
its your choice pay more or pay less I have had various success with both methods I had an agent Reeds Rains for one place after 3 weeks I decided to go to the office ,they had shut down and not told me!!! I like open rent and if it gets a bit slow I . am not bothered but then I have no mortgages so no pressure.
Thanks for the reply, it’s the sudden drop off that I’m concerned about, when I tried to send myself a message it does come with having to prove you are not a robot by clicking the pictures (I hate that!), and it could be putting potential people off. The slowdown seemed to coincide with an email from OpenRent about getting too many enquires and compulsory filtering may be imposed.
I could just lower the price but I found I got about the same number but no more viewings. As OpenRent is only £29 I was thinking of stopping the ad for a day and then paying another fee as a fresh advert, would that be allowed and worth doing?
Yes I do seem to recollect they send you a message to try to gee you up I just kept going with them .You get a lot of chancers who will apply to you, that an agent filters out, so you do not get to know about it
Heya I’m a renter but saw this and thought I’d help open rent is good as there are lots of people here who can’t use letting agents for instance I’m self employed but can easily afford my rent but letting agents are to stringent and don’t use current accommodation as proof of paying rent etc and fail you easily so you will always have a whole category of new potential tenants like me that won’t or can’t go anywhere else. Hope this helps.
Hi. I just had a similar issue but I know why. Mine was that I was asking for the highest rent in the area for the type of property. I persevered as it was of a higher standard than others in the area, offering more advantages than the competition. In my ad I pushed those advantages, writing it in a fun way. Can you see my last ad? If not I can send you a link. High street agents will say anything to get you on their books. Be wary. I’ve had better success overall with Openrent, at a much lower cost. First thing to do is decide what’s wrong. Is it price the ad content or something else. Remove it from the market for a few days, look at what your competing with on rightmove, make the changes & advertise again. There will always now be a lot more chancers since the rule change on fees. But ask the direct questions when viewing. I come out and blatantly ask about credit history. If they’re hiding something, it’s often quite easy to tell. If they get that easily offended, I won’t take them anyway. Persevere though. Remember to think what’s the high street agent going to do that Openrent and you cant do? Contact me if youd like to see my ad & cant already. Best of luck.
Hi Thanks for the detailed reply. I actually took a two prong approach, I reduced the price on openrent to below £1000.00, previously £1050, I also appointed the local agent who did a reduced price finders fee but knew Openrent ad was still up. Within 1 day I had two clients from local agent and two from Openrent, I’ve taken a holding deposit from Openrent tenant and doing referencing now and will hopefully sign TA next week. My property was a higher spec and everything is almost brand new, I could possibly have waited but with every week losing me £250 rent and actually costing £100, taking £50 pm month less and getting getting a tenant in quickly was hopefully a good move.
there are hot and cool times to offer rental properties so as long as you have checked the ads are up and running particularly rightmove you are ok. you simply need to drop the price. a £100 less a month is better than losing a months empty. thats loss of rent and council tax to pay plus standing charges etc.
openrent also go on some cheap websites such as gumtree where the quality of response in my experience is poorer
I have found that setting the asking rent just below one of the rental bands on RightMove makes a lot of difference to the number of replies. Obvious really, but I had to learn the lesson.