Rent Payments This Christmas!

Make sure tenants don’t over indulge and underpay rent this Christmas!

Christmas should be a fun time, and it is no fun suffering the stress and worry that comes with mounting arrears over the Christmas period.

For tenants there can be serious pressure to buy gifts and entertain friends and family over the holiday season. Given these pressures, it is an unfortunate reality that some households choose not to pay their rent so they can prioritise other spending. Research from Shelter UK shows that one in 12 tenants are prepared to forgo their rent payments over Christmas, there is a significant risk that your arrears figures could grow.

Everyone takes a different approach to arrears, some taking a harder no tolerance line, some taking proactive steps to help ensure their tenants get their rent paid to avoid eviction. Either way at the end of the day if we can avoid eviction it is better for all parties involved. Whilst the majority of your portfolio may be good rent payers, this is the time that some of them will slip, and this is also a time that a repeat offender is more than likely to re-offend.

Some options to combat arrears at this time to minimise our stress include:

• Running a marketing campaign in the build up to Christmas that aims to deter from tenants falling behind, to see some examples of Christmas arrears marketing campaigns click here.
• Offer a financial support and advice service through assistance with budgeting plans. Some company’s provide a flyer with budgeting advice, some will go so far as offering a financial planning helpline to call.
• Implement Rewards/Incentives to ensure all payments are on time:
• Running a competition for all who keep their rent up to date
• Offering movie tickets for all who are two weeks in advance over the period
• Providing special personal warnings to repeat offenders, almost to let them know that we’re going to be watching their arrears very closely over the period to make sure they stay on time.
• Some agencies even offer the tenants an option to pay extra throughout the year to help them get a bit ahead for these tighter times.
• Reminding tenants of importance of maintaining positive ledger, instead of threatening termination, let them know you want to help them maintain a positive rental ledger to assist with future rentals (and even mortgage repayments as these days some lenders are requesting this information)
• Utilise your blog, newsletters and social media to educate and share the message

Be sure to choose what works for your agency and your brand. Don’t forget to score some brownie points with the owners and let them know what you’re doing to ensure they don’t have missing payments over Christmas! What other ideas do you have for keeping your arrears low at Christmas time? Please share them below!

For our Real Plus members be sure to check out our Christmas Letter template on your portal and stay tuned for more Christmas tips in your daily property management hints.

Hermione Gardiner 

From the Eyes of a Prospective Tenant

I have recently been in the market for a rental property. Whilst conducting my own rental search, I have been taking note of my consumer experience as a prospective tenant in order to be able to deliver live customer feedback, information and training to our property management clients.

I’ve almost felt like a mystery shopper at times, secretly taking note of the quality of advertising & photos, accuracy of descriptions and photos, response times from agents, presentation of the agent and presentation of the property. Along the way I also reviewed the application process across several agencies and in particular - how I have been treated as a prospective tenant and ultimately how this affected my decision in choosing which properties to visit and ultimately lease!

There were definitely some property inspections and agent response times that left me feeling bad for the landlord that the agent’s actions had turned me off renting their property! And even further still that if I was a prospective landlord that I would not be choosing that agent to lease my property.

Don’t get me wrong, many of the agents were doing a great job, however my experience was very interesting and eye opening which has helped me identify some key areas that leasing agents need to work on at the leasing stage of their property management process. (Without meaning to toot our own horns, I was very pleased to see that one of the best experiences I had was with an agency who is a Real+ Member undergoing regular training across their property management team – the proof is in the pudding).

So, want to know more? Well next week I’ll be hosting a webinar on leasing – in which we’ll be talking about ways to get properties leased faster, reduce vacancy and ways to make your lives easier. I can tell you now that what I’ve learnt from being a prospective tenant will be going into this session so be sure not to miss this one if you want to know how to improve your leasing process!

If you are Real+ member, click here to visit Real+TV where you can watch our webinar Just Leased! Leasing made Faster, Smarter & Easier.

How Would You Rate Your Rent Review Process?

We all know an essential part of our property management process is the rent review. At this stage we are generally finding out what the tenants plans are and if they want to stay on, then letting the landlord know the current rental value. But what if we took this simple rent review s step further and conducted a complete tenancy review with the landlord?

What if next time the rent review comes up we conduct the tenancy review as if we were sitting at a new listing presentation with them to discuss their needs by asking questions such as:

• “Paul, before we review the rental value on your property I just wanted to have a chat about you. What are your plans for the next 12-24 months?
• How have you found the tenancy so far? What do you think of the tenants?
• What is going to be most important to you in reviewing this tenancy? Increased rental value? Or tenant security?
• When would you like us to next review the rent?
• Do you have any plans to move back in or sell in the foreseeable future? As we can work on a plan towards that together.

Perhaps the landlords wants, needs and expectations have changed since you appraised their property 12 or more months ago. Things change so quickly in all of our lives, we need to remember that our landlords are people like us and things change in their lives too, therefore we need to consider their needs which are constantly changing just as our own are.

Originally your landlord wanted a family in their property, but are quickly realising that perhaps that professional group would have been better. Perhaps they were planning to stay away for 3 or more years but now plan to return home in six months time. Perhaps they are thinking of selling in a year but may not realise increasing the rent now risks the tenants vacating closer to the sale time.

This new process of reviewing not just the rent, but the tenancy itself will enable you to best recommend options to the landlords based on their needs (and not what we assume their needs are based on our process). Most importantly, just by opening up this whole new world of communication you are improving the relationship between yourself and the landlord by showing you actually care about their wants and needs. Imagine the possibilities.

If you are Real+ member, click here to visit Real+TV where you can watch our webinar: Systemise for Success - Rent Reviews.

New Condition Report for Residential Tenancies in NSW

In a bid to reduce the incidence of falls from windows and balconies, the NSW government has made changes to the condition report for rental premises. Effective from 1^st March, the new version of the condition report includes ‘window safety devices’ wherever ‘windows/screens’ feature.

Whichever method of condition reports you use, whether that be paper, online or a third party application, ensure that your reports are updated to reflect this change. You can see an example of the new version of report by downloading a copy from Fair Trading’s website here.

For more information surrounding window safety and the safety measures being implemented in NSW, visit the Fair Trading window and balcony safety page.