Are you struggling to fill your HMO rooms and arrange viewings? Do you spend hours managing enquiries, only to find out that they’re not the right tenant for you or your property? Is it costing you money? If any of these are the case, then this blog post is for you!
SpareRoom is like the Rightmove for letting rooms and is one of the most important platforms that you will ever use when it comes to managing HMO properties. The better you are at using the platform, the quicker you will fill your rooms, the better the tenants you can secure and the more profitable your properties will be.
Read my seven top tips to master SpareRoom below or check out the full episode on The HMO Podcast.
1. Assess the Data
SpareRoom has a huge amount of data included in its free membership. You can find out the difference between the number of rooms on offer and the number of tenants looking for rooms in a specific area, and you can actually compare that to locations all over the country.
This can help you set and manage expectations and understand the competition and supply and demand in an area, so have a good look at the data available and figure out what’s happening in your location.
2. Get Your Adverts Right
First and foremost, you need to get your adverts right. This includes getting the title and copy bang on so that it captures prospective tenants’ attention. The photos you use, particularly the leading photos, need to be high-quality and effective. And lastly, your price must be competitive.
Doing all of this will get you the best results for your HMO property business. Not getting certain areas right will mean your rooms won’t be at the top of the listings. Take this seriously. Try testing different things and see what works best.
3. Understand the Upgrade Features
You have the option to pay for an upgraded membership on SpareRoom, which provides bold adverts and early-bird access to tenants. Bold adverts get on average twice as many enquiries. Depending on the value of your HMO rooms and ultimately the cost of that void, this is more than likely going to be a very cost-effective solution to help you get your rooms filled quickly.
Bold adverts rank higher in the search results than free adverts and actually stand out on the page. Prospective tenants will see them before they see others, so they’re more likely to click on them.
With an upgraded membership, any prospective tenant can also contact you from day one. Tenants who have free accounts can’t enquire about a property until seven days have expired unless the landlord has an upgraded account. Most HMO tenants aren’t going to pay for memberships, so if you don’t upgrade, they’ll have to wait several days to enquire about your property.
4. Utilise Featured Ads
At the top of every search result on SpareRoom, there is a spot reserved for featured ads as a pay-per-click service. Through this, you can pay for bids in hopes to get yourself to the top of the listing. Depending on what the competition is, the traction your advert is getting and the amount your bid is for will determine where you sit in the listing.
SpareRoom will give you a recommendation as to what your bid limit should be for a specific advert. You can also set bid limits per day, so you can manage how much you’re spending. Always track the results of your featured ads. Test and see what works and what doesn’t until you find the most effective solution.
5. Renew Your Adverts Regularly
Next to every advert is a button that allows you to renew it. You can’t do it every minute of the day, but you can renew your advert pretty regularly. To see the importance of this free feature, you really need to understand how adverts are ordered in SpareRoom.
All of the adverts that are less than 24 hours old are marked as new today, and these are at the very top of the listings. This means the first 24 hours is your opportunity to be as cost-effective as possible, but as soon as that time expires, you often start to drop down the listings very quickly.
If you have an ad package with the boost feature, this will mark your advert as new. Renewed adverts are also marked as new, but it won’t go back in as new today. This means these won’t climb quite as high as those posted in the past 24 hours, but this feature will still keep you near the top.
6. Reply to Enquiries Quickly
Aim to answer all enquiries within 15 minutes, be engaging with these prospective tenants and offer them viewings within 48 hours. If you do that, your chances of converting them into viewings will increase tenfold, which will then lead to securing tenancies more quickly.
I know this is tough to do, and just to be clear, I’m not excluding evenings or weekends here. Do what you can, but be aware that if you can’t respond immediately, then other landlords will beat you to it.
7. Create Some Scarcity
You must be genuine with this. There’s nothing worse than a salesman generating scarcity when it really doesn’t exist. However, if you have a really popular room and you’re getting an influx of enquiries, tell those enquiries about that and that you have several viewings lined up.
That scarcity will help fuel tenants to book a viewing quickly and generate momentum. If lots of people are clicking on your adverts, then the algorithm naturally keeps you higher, and that’s going to help you get those viewings secured and ultimately, get tenants secured.
So those are my top tips to help you boost your results on SpareRoom! It’s important you stay on top of all this because this is the reality of what you need to do on the platform to fill rooms quicker, stay at the top of the listings, reduce your voids and make your HMO business more profitable.
For more lessons and advice on how to secure tenants and manage your HMO portfolio, sign up for The HMO Roadmap today!
About the Author:
Andy Graham is the founder and the lead trainer at The HMO Roadmap! He is also the co-founder of The HMO Mastermind and Smart Property, a specialist HMO property investment and management company. He writes as a regular columnist in different magazines about a variety of HMO topics and is the host of The HMO Podcast! Follow Andy on Instagram!