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A prospective tenant has recounted a recent disastrous open for inspection and one PM director, searching for a property herself, has said the poor presentation of properties online and at opens is a common mistake PMs are making.
The tenant, who wished to remain unnamed, told Residential Property Manager about a recent open for inspection, which left them appalled.
The tenant said she had viewed an apartment in inner-west Sydney on realestate.com and thinking it suited her needs she contacted the property manager to inspect.
“The first thing that was immediately noticeable was the apartment photos online were completely different to what we were shown – layout and everything,” she said.
“It was awful – the view from the apartment seemed to be overlooking a leafy tree online.
“In reality, the apartment overlooked a grease-stained carpark and the next apartment building.
“The bathroom and laundry looked to be separate rooms, but in the actual apartment, the 'laundry' was a messy corner of the tiny bathroom, piled high with the tenant's dirty clothes,” she added.
The tenant said to top off the whole experience, the property manager’s attire included “track pants, a grubby T-shirt and he was unshaven”.
LJ Hooker network performance manager – property investment management Amy Sanderson, who has also been searching for a rental property for herself, said she has discounted so many properties online due to the poor quality of the photos.
“I have potentially missed the perfect property because I haven’t been attracted to it because the photos haven’t enticed me to look further,” Ms Sanderson told Residential Property Manager.
“And I understand property managers are busy, so they go around and ‘snap, snap, snap’ and they chuck stuff up on the internet just to get it up there, but I think we just need to take a break and think about the photos that we take before we put them up there.”
Ms Sanderson said the presentation of properties online and the presentation of properties at the opens were the biggest mistakes she found property managers were making.
“One of things I have always said to my teams is photos need to be current and you always need to look at the photo as a consumer, and think would that entice you to go look at the property further,” she said.
“[Also] properties would be advertised, not always with an open time, and it would say contact the agent for an inspection, and I would email them and hear nothing back. If it was a property I particularly wanted to see I would ring and I would get no response back.
“It absolutely shocked me,” she added.
After experiencing the presentation and promotion of rental listings from the other side, Ms Sanderson said she is making it her focus this quarter.
“It is our core focus in Q1 for LJ Hooker. I have done a video to the network on it, face-to-face training and we are also in the process of mystery shopping all of our agents to ensure that they are contacting tenants when they are enquiring.”
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