Near Year, New Goals - Time for New Paint, Carpet, and Blinds?

Welcome, 2021! We welcome you with open arms!

As property managers, if we learned anything last year, we have to keep on our toes and stand out to lease out our portfolio with the changing rental market.

According to domain.com.au, the working-from-home phenomenon from last year had allowed tenants to look across several suburbs to upsize on the same budget.

This meant that not only were we competing with properties in the same suburb, we were also competing against properties in other suburbs! So what did we do? We rolled up our sleeves and started encouraging our owners to invest money back into their properties.

Three factors that lease out a property:

Price
Presentation
Promotion

All three factors need to be working in conjunction with another.

What we did:

We had to ensure our properties were spruced up and presentable.
Reviewed and adjusted rental prices on a daily basis.
Improved our marketing packages to promote all our properties to the top of the search results

Here are a few examples of properties we spruced up last year to lease them out.

Address: 420 Pitt St Haymarket

1 bedroom 1 bathroom apartment – leased for $450

Pre-COVID rent: $620/week

Days on Market: 7 days

We had to move very quickly for this particular owner as the property was becoming vacant just before the festive period. Our landlady was lovely and forthcoming with repairs, so she was more than happy to have work done and invest money into marketing to find a good long term tenant for her.

Works done:

Blinds replaced throughout – cost $888

Fresh paint throughout – cost $1,650

Carpets replaced throughout – cost $2,150

BEFORE

AFTER

Address: 303 Castlereagh St Haymarket

2 bedroom, 2 bathrooms, 1 car space – leased for $540/week

Pre COVID rent: $850/week

This particular property was a lot of work for our property managers as the property had been transferred over from a different agency and been heart-breakingly neglected. The owner was overseas and had no visual confirmation of what the apartment looked like now to top it off. The previous tenants (secured by old managing agents) had been overcrowding.

Luckily, the owner had landlord insurance, and we were able to recoup some of the cleaning and rubbish removal costs.

Fresh paint throughout – cost $1,980

Carpets replaced throughout – cost $3,000

Replaced dim Oyster lights with bright LED lights – $85 per light