Switching on to finding tenants with a phone app

Switching on to finding tenants with a phone app

14:39 PM, 4th February 2011, About 14 years ago

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Looking for a home to rent online from home or the office is easy – but tracking down properties is a lot harder when you are on the move.

Letting agent apps – short for ‘application’ – are changing the face of letting a home for many mobile phone users.

Apps are available free for many high-end phones like the iPhone, Blackberry and other brands that operate on Google Android software.

Landlords with letting agents whose properties to rent are not listed on an app could lose out on finding a tenant.

For the less technical savvy landlord this is how an app works:

  • First, the home hunter has to have an internet enabled mobile phone with a rental property search app loaded.
  • The phone queries the app’s database for properties to rent based on a radius from where the user is standing or parked using the phone’s in-built GPS in the same way a sat-nav pinpoints a car’s location.
  • The home hunter can then view the properties from the outside to check on location and amenities, like shops and schools.
  • The app then drills down to specific home information, like the rent, property details, floor plans and photographs.

Dozens of estate agents have free apps to download – but these are really only useful in smaller towns where one or two agents dominate the rental market.

Portal apps, like Rightmove, that list multiple agents in an area return a lot more information to prospective tenants and give them a choice of properties in any neighbourhood.

The benefit for the home hunter is they can check out and short list a property in the area they want to live without even visiting a letting agent.

Landlords with properties listed on the apps are reaching a far wider market and are likely to cut void periods.

The problem is landlords self-marketing properties may miss out on this potential new marketing tool – and the flow of tenants a mobile phone app can provide.


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