How Facebook Can Help Landlords & Letting Agents

How Facebook Can Help Landlords & Letting Agents

12:05 PM, 16th September 2011, About 13 years ago 2

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I’ve heard reports of 30 prospective tenants applying for every property on landlords and lettings agents books. What do they do with the other 29 records of prospective customers?  To me, the answer is obvious. Create a Facebook page purely for prospective tenants and ask them to become friends as soon as they make an enquiry. Then add details of every property that comes available to your Facebook page – simples!

I was talking to an agent last night who started doing this just two months ago and already has 2,000 tenant friends. If each of them has an average of just 200 friends on their Facebook that’s a whopping second tier of 400,000 potential clients and who might they know? More tenants, more landlords? Just think about that one for a second …. every time she adds a new property, all those people get to see the details and may well tell friends about it who are looking for a property just like the one she’s advertising. How cool is that!

I’ve been using this strategy for about a year to reduce my rental voids to virtually zero. It also affords me an opportunity to leverage social media and the credibility of my business. What’s really great is when I spot people moaning and put it right before they even call me. A good example this week is a lady who was whinging about her fence blowing down in the high winds last weekend. I called her before she called me and her subsequent Facebook comments were extremely complimentary.

I recorded the video below earlier this year – ENJOY

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Mark Alexander
Mark and his family have been investing in property since 1989, initially in the Norwich area but more recently across the length and breadth of England. Mark created Property118.com as a social network for landlords with a vision of becoming the UK’s largest online property investor directory.
Mark’s experiences and strategies as a landlord are shared here

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11:07 AM, 19th September 2011, About 13 years ago

Mark- I think Facebook, and social media in general, are under utilised by letting agents. Not only are they a powerful tool to reach prospective landlords and tenants, but could prove useful when vetting tenant quality and suitability. For example, in the same way that employers have used Facebook to vet prospective employees.

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9:11 AM, 23rd September 2011, About 13 years ago

Mark - Facebook can be a valuable tool but can also be an area where disgruntled tenants can leave poor/bad references for landlords who have asked them to leave/asked for rent/asked for a modification in their behaviour, but that need not put landlords and agents using it. Remember that many landlords associations have an area where prospective tenants can put in an advert for a property in an area meaning that they are targetting landlords within that association, for example the CRLA website has a very simple form for tenants to complete (http://www.crla.org.uk/crlapages/tenantapply.aspx) with the advert being visible in the members only area of the website.
Ruth Clarke, Chairman CRLA

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