Tips for Keeping your Condo Rented Year-Round
The trick to running 95% occupancy year-round in fully furnished privately owned condos: Actually, there are no tricks to this business. We start off by doing whatever is best for our principal. It’s not the tenant – it’s the owner of the unit.
Here are five effective strategies, not tricks, to help increase the unit owner’s return on investment (ROI):
1. Competitive pricing
We are constantly monitoring the pricing of our units to ensure we are always competitively priced in the marketplace. By only blocking suites 21 days in advance of arrival date, plus giving our top 20 Corporate Companies right of first referral, we have managed to run full most of the time. There is no advantage to getting $1000.00 above market value if the suite sits unoccupied a month before, or after, a reservation has blocked a specific unit six months in advance.
2. Minimal downtime
Our downtime usually only occurs when we have to block each unit for five days between stays to have it cleaned, do small repairs and get it back into inventory as soon as possible.
Most of our Business Tenants are not sure how long they will require the accommodation for, so we usually contact them before booking the suite for a new tenant. This helps ensure they still plan to leave on the date we have them down to go. Moving a tenant to another suite in the middle of a stay is costly, doubles the workload and makes for unhappy tenants.
3. Efficient tenant screening and follow through
Our tenants are screened as much as possible with careful attention paid to passports and photo Id. We discourage more than two people in any of our units. Children, pets and smokers can be extremely hard on our units and thus, many of our units are not suitable for everyone.
4. Efficient communication about regulations and services
The most difficult part of the job is keeping the Strata Corporations, Building Managers, Tenants and Staff informed about smoke detector inspections, dryer vent cleanings, Internet connections and cable and telephone problems. Add to this the problems you have from some guests who want hotel-type services that we cannot provide, and, needless to say, we are always on the run.
5. Profitable inventory restrictions
At present, we are restricting all new inventory to newer buildings. They are the most popular with all of our tenants. We anticipate a growth of 35% over the next 12 months and hopefully an increase in the return to our owners by at least 10%.
Freezing the rent can be a very useful tool to keep your tenant. There are a lot of homeowners in Vancouver, but vacancy rates are still very low, so its a landlords market for the most part. As a landlord you can’t underestimate a good tenant. I’ve only raised the rent in between tenants. On the same note, I have set a lower rent in the past, giving me the pick of tenants. I’m a big believer in the passive part of passive rental income.