In the spring of 2011, The Property Academy took on the bold task of surveying the thoughts and feelings of landlords across the UK. Our thanks to them for completing this; as the results that came back were very interesting and made us ask some big questions.
A statistic that came back from the survey was that, surprisingly, 43 per cent of landlords only go on valuations with one letting agent. So, they might contact another agent but if you’re visiting the property it’s 43 per cent likely that no other agent will get the chance. This is good news but it brings a challenge as well; because if you’re not getting 4 out of 10 of your valuations turning into instructions, you’re missing a trick somewhere and it may be worth looking at why you’re losing out.
Understanding the landlord is key in this process, and it’s here that the landlord survey really challenges the norm. Very surprisingly, having cheap fees was almost not a factor in a landlord’s decision making process compared to customer service and the feeling of trust when they first walk through your door. Question is, how do you convey trust and how do you know if this is THE factor to why you are losing business?
From my own agency’s experience, we can see how much trust plays an important factor in winning the landlord – having a great promotion won’t help if the landlord doesn’t have ‘that feeling’ when they first walk in.
At LetMC we’ve known that trust is an essential factor as well, though we’re only just beginning to realise just how important it can be. This is why we continue to develop apps that help good communication between agents and their landlords. Since 2004 we’ve offered our customers transparency for their landlords through a website login, where they’ll always have access to their invoices, notes and reports that helps build confidence and trust.
The question is, how will tools like this be used? The challenge for my own agency along with the rest of the industry is to make sure that all resources work together to ensure valuations aren’t lost and that trust is built with the landlord all the way through their journey.
