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Landlords And Tenants Shouldn’t Neglect The “Wanted” Section

Written by The Landlord on 09 Feb 2010

The traditional way for prospective tenants to find accommodation would be to walk into a letting agent, look in the local paper, scan through local advertising boards, or look through various online portals e.g. Gumtree. All these methods have one thing in common, it’s the Landlord doing the marketing. But it doesn’t have to be like that. It actually makes a lot of sense for the tenants to also market themselves. Let me explain…

When I was previously looking for tenants, the first thing I did was place an advert on Gumtree (How to market your BTL effectively on Gumtree). One of the processes of marketing my property on Gumtree involved checking out the local competition to see what I was up against. I searched for all the rental property available in the same area as my vacant property. While looking through the results, I noticed that a prospective tenant had published a “wanted” advert. A young couple were looking for a property to rent in the location where I had a vacant property. I got in touch with them and they took a viewing, and shortly after became my tenants.

If you think about it, it was a backward approach to how tenants and landlords typically collide, but it was still extremely affective. In the advert the tenants sold themselves to me; it’s usually the landlord doing all the selling.

Here’s a more recent example of how someone else is doing it:

Tenant looking for landlord

You can actually see the live advert here for now (it may disappear in time).

She sells herself well, and obviously the picture is a great selling point as you can see who you’re dealing with. She’s getting interest, just look at the pageviews. If I had a vacant property in the area, I would definitely give her a call.

Anyways, it’s just something for prospective tenants and landlords to think about. Traditional methods aren’t always the best or only options.

A quick thank you to the folks over at Royals Of Rent for linking me to the advert via Twitter.

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1 Comment - join the conversation...

Sam2010-02-09 20:15:23 I completely agree with you - we have been massive advocates of tenants placing their wanted ads on VirtualLetz - that way landlords can also search for tenants! And, the system can match up landlords and tenants! Wonderful - finding tenants when you're not even looking! We just need to get more to register - but they're increasing all the time :) 1