Author: danielrv

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Letting agency website design

In our last blog post on letting industry challenges we looked at how winning new landlords was one of the current biggest challenges for letting agents. Apart from providing an excellent service to your landlords and winning referrals, your website is currently your next best marketing tool. The problem is, as we discussed, that many letting agents neglect their website and their letting agency website design.

How to use your strong letting agency website design to build a portfolio

letting agency website design

Image Credit: Jayel Aharem

Letting agency SEO

So let’s start by doing a quick health check on your website to see how people are currently finding you. There are a couple of simple enough ways to get under the hood of your site, I would recommend using Google Analytics (click here for a previous blog on Analytics) or Google webmaster tools. You can access these by simply setting up a free Google account (if you haven’t already got one) and simply searching for them. You will need access to the control panel of your website to install a simple code into your website as a security feature. It’s quite simple but if that is something you are not comfortable doing, just ask who ever looks after your site to install the code.

Analyse your website

If you can’t access either of these a simple way to get some information on your website is to got through Alexa. Here you can get a quick overview of where your website ranks. It also gives you the chance to see keyword queries that bring a high percentage of traffic to a particular URL. So when here, check your own site and then perhaps a competitor who is doing well.

Once you get the site up, you can go through and click onto search analytics to see the top search queries which are driving traffic to your competitor’s website. Compare it with your own.  Is your competitor generating more traffic through search terms? Are the search terms they rank highly in ones which you wish to gain traffic through? If so, they are probably working more effectively on SEO than your own site. Most letting agents are looking at finding landlords through their website SEO.

letting agency website design

How to use your website as a visitor

Search the term that you think a new landlord would search to find a property manager or letting agent in your area, then see who ranks the highest. Now visit their site on Alexa to find out more about them. Learn from their website and implement changes needed to move your website up the search ranking.

Another interesting statistic to find out is how many back links your competitor has. The more back links a site has, the more attractive the website is for search engines to return that site on the first page of a search result (or SERP). A back link is your website’s URL on another website. Below is how a back link looks: 

https://rentview.co/blog/data-backup-for-agencies/ or if hyperlinked in text, the same link might look like this.

If you want to know more about link building strategies this is a great place to start. In order for your website to generate traffic, it is very important to look at your letting agency website design.

by Andreas Riha

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Letting industry challenges

What is the biggest challenge in the letting industry today?

This is a question I ask letting agents regularly, and it seems that winning new instructions is one of the biggest letting industry challenges out there at the moment. With rental properties being in such high demand there has never been a better time to rent property. With the average tenancy term increased and more people renting – it’s simply supply and demand. So what can letting agents do to increase their rental listings?

Where do most of your tenants find your listings at the moment?

Letting industry shop window

letting-industry

The internet is the majority of letting agents’ biggest shop window and a lot of the time it is better than any shop window on the high street. The problem is that many agents neglect their own website thinking that just because it is live it will get them new listings from landlords. However, the internet is a very busy high street and if you’re not managing your website correctly the competition is going to attract the lion’s share.

I mean, you would not open a letting agency and not place a sign over the door or advertise the fact that you are a letting agency, would you? I would not have thought so, but this is what some agencies are doing on the internet. So how can you find out how easy you are to find on the internet for potential landlords, and tenants for that matter? Begin some search engine research today! SEO  or search engine optimization is important for all businesses, including those within the letting industry, who have an online presence nowadays. For more information on SEO, see our blogs below.

letting-industry

Blogs which may interest you on this topic

Find out more about letting agency seo

How to win customers through a Google adwords advertising campaign

by Andreas Riha

 

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Letting agency accounts

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Letting agency accounts update                                                                                                                                           

We have been busy gathering feedback from our users and implementing changes to improve your experience and needs with your Rentview agency account. So what’s new?

With the development team’s time spent primarily on accounting and preparing the client account for the last quarter of 2012, there was not a huge amount of visual changes to Rentview. Your Rentview account will now track all monies in and out of your client’s account in line with regulation.

Via the Accounts toolbar there are now 5 Tabs

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Rents- The “Rents” tab allows you to track what rents are overdue, due today and due within the next seven days. This is shown through a traffic light system. Here, you can reconcile the payments as received and partially paid. As you know, this is can be the busiest part of the maintenance of your letting agency accounts. 

Statements- The “Statements” tab monitors what rents have been processed as received; either in your client account or in cash en route to be deposited into your client account.

Deposits- The “Deposits” tab reports on what tenancy deposits you are holding in your client account. This will only report on the deposits that are selected as held in client account when starting a new lease term on a property. Once a tenancy has ended after the lease term or prematurely the deposit can be reconciled out of the client account.

Fees– The “Fees” tab reports on what Agency Fees are currently being held in your client account. An agency fee will appear in your client account after you process payments from a landlord’s statement page as paid. An agency fee needs to be added as such under the landlord’s statement page under each monthly invoice. You can clear your agency fees from your client account into your business or office account as often as you wish.

Tradesman- The “Tradesman” tab allows you to track what deductions are in your client account and due to be taken from rental payments. A tradesman invoice is any deduction to be made from a rental payment which is not an agency fee. Deductions could represent a tradesperson, supplier, petty cash, ad hoc expenses etc. You can select any tradesman account to see what is currently outstanding in payment, what is in your client account and can be paid, and what was paid in the past. 

Making your letting agency accounts easier to manage

All of the information here will allow you to reconcile and report on what monies are currently in your client account and who they belong to in line with client account regulation. An accounts summary tab in your agency configuration will report on the accumulated amounts.  An accounts feature to be released in early 2013 will be the accounts statement / ledger page. This will show you the history of money in and out of your client account, similar to your bank statement.

That’s it for today folks, if you have any questions, you can get in touch with us on our Facebook!

by Rentview

Articles of interest

How to collect rent

Letting agent revenues

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Letting agent marketing strategy

marketing-strategy

Back to strategy today and a very important topic about letting agent marketing strategy. Terence Shimp is a widely renowned expert in the area of marketing communications and branding for companies and a lot of these thoughts are adapted from his work.

So firstly; a brand is name, term, sign, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates goods and services of one letting agent from another and also communicates a particular set of values for that agency.

No branding is something that would be more focused on goods and products. However, more and more service providers are gaining a competitive advantage through creating unique brands for their companies. This applies to letting agents also, they want brand equity, a letting agent that customers are familiar with and believe in, known for letting property quick and known for providing quality rental accommodation with excellent management staff etc. What do you want be known for?

What is your brand? 

So, what are the benefits of having a strong brand equity behind your property services? You can increase your market share, increase loyalty with current clients and look into premium pricing for certain services you offer due to the reputation you have created for the brand. If we take a familiar product for Irish lets thing alcohol. Bulmers for example, you think summer, socialising, beer gardens, fun etc all in their adverts . What happen’s when you head to the pub on a hot summer’s day- you buy a bloody pint of Bulmers! So start getting an image, message, meaning behind your agency and what you stand for!

Letting agent marketing strategyimage

OK so you choose the brand now how to you develop it and sustain it for your agency. Well you can use brand positioning , which is basically influencing the attitudes of what landlords and tenants think of your brand through you marketing and advertising – that’s another days writing but you know what I mean!

The second area you want to focus on is the integration of your brand messages throughout all areas of marketing for your agency. From your ad’s on the front window of your agency to your social media pages be consistent with the messages and values you are putting behind the brand! Letting agent marketing strategy should be well thought out.

by Rentview

Articles that may interest you

Why use Youtube for marketing

Link building strategies

Social media for letting agents

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Data Backup for Letting Agencies

backup-data

Data backup. One of the the key phrases that should be coming from every estate agency owner’s mouth on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis. It is a hot topic in the Rentview office at the moment, as we learn that several agencies are not backing up valuable data often enough. Some don’t even think of it to begin with! Obviously, as a property services provider, the day to day running of a lettings or estate agency will involve a lot of data entry and management. This is vital to smooth operation of the business, but the backing up of such data is CRITICAL to the survival of any business.

Say for example, you have the best in-house system an agency could dream of, data entry is done accordingly and managed to perfection. Unfortunately your office is the target of a freak accident next week where a firework sets it on fire. Now this is likely not to happen, but if you did lose your computers during an accident, that’d be the end of your company and its existence. There is no getting it back, unless you have done one of two things. A, Backed it up on external hard drives or B invested in a cloud-based system that provides data backup for you.

data-backup

I cannot stress enough the importance of backing your data up on a regular basis and in a safe, secure way so that if you did burn down tomorrow, you could open the next day somewhere else easily. Most cloud-based software will be automatically backed up onto the main server regularly. I know on the Amazon S3 server we use it’s every hour. With more and more business being done digitally and important documents being sent to one another via e-mail and through software now is the time to develop a data back up strategy.

Property Management Software

Rent Management Software

by Rentview

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Letting Agency Marketing Tools

Today we are going to look at 3 free tools on the web available to letting agents throughout the world online to market their services on. The digital age is in full swing, and the way people communicate and digest information is completely different to those of the same age five years ago.

So my top 3 tools for Letting Agency Marketing are:

letting-agency-marketing

#1 Vimeo or YouTube Video blogs 

Ever started reading something and then realised it’s so long that by the time you have gotten to the end you forgot what the hell it was about? Well in my opinion, long-winded product or service descriptions are becoming more and more outdated and people want to be shown or told visually rather than textually. So take the first step and start recording some videos to release to your landlords and tenants. We prefer to use the vimeo service due to the quality of the video.

You can also watch our video on how to set up a letting agency video channel.

#2 Pinterest Picture Sharing 

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As I mentioned before, the days of everything being described or sold in text are long gone.  Images rule nowadays. Why not get creative with some original imagery to go along with your marketing messages? We do it a lot on our Facebook page and it is a nice break from the usual content people would expect. We are slowly building our Pinterest page with a wide range of photos from the team out on the field, business events, funny viral images and more. Check the page out here.

#3 Facebook and Twitter Pages

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I am presuming that many letting agents and estate agents will have already got this far with their marketing, but many do it wrong or see now value in using social media  Facebook   and Twitter for business. Social media is important these days, whether you like it or not.

Have realistic expectations, though. I don’t follow an agency to find out every single listing they have available, likewise I don’t like a Facebook page to constantly hear what’s on offer from the agency. Use it as a customer development tool and start running some competitions or posting some interesting and funny relevant content to get a buzz going about your agency.

by Rentview

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Advantages of Cloud Computing for Property Management

Welcome to this short blog explaining the term cloud computing how it works in terms of property management software and how it can transform your letting agency in terms of speed, service, reliability and more.

advantages-of-cloud-computing

The top Advantages of Cloud Computing for Property Management are:

  1. More work / less space : So firstly a cloud-based system is  not like any other, you purchase a monthly SAAS (software as a service) package. This is opposed to buying physical space for servers, storage and people to manage such systems. Upgrading is made simple as the system is online.
  2. Customisation: When you buy cloud-based software, most packages are designed to allow unique customisation to your business needs. Take for example Rentview, which is broken into four different packages for letting and estate agents.
  3. Money, Money, Money: Using a cloud-based system has a few benefits to do with the saving of costs and increasing sales or number of customers. The great thing about the cloud is there is no big time investment in the hardware, software and servers mentioned above, it’s usually a monthly fee which can be cancelled on a short enough notice. You can also automate many re-occurring business activities in the agency.
  4. Reliability: Because the system is served on the internet, you can access your data and management system from any place in the world once you have a internet connection. The data is also backed up on servers, assuring there is no loss of information if say for example, you lost your USB or the office burnt down!
  5. Opportunities: Many of these systems have built-in tools and features that can help you to take your business to the next level. Some will offer the chance to engage with customers and be used as a CRM tool as well as in-house management tool. This allow you to learn more from your market and generate new opportunities.

Hope you enjoyed this one and can see the advantages of cloud computing for your letting agency.

Cormac

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Lettings Management Industry- a PEST Analysis

Some of you will have read the article last week on business strategy for letting and estate agents in the Lettings Management Industry, which received a good response, so I am continuing in a similar theme this week. Obviously we discussed what strategies agencies can take to the market, but before you get anywhere close to deciding on your strategy towards achieving a competitive advantage, you have to first do some analysis. Analysing the situation you are in as an agency will involve:

  1.  internal analysis (factors unique to the agency like routines, capabilities, strengths and weaknesses) and
  2. external analysis which is where I am going to start today.

lettings-management-industry-PEST-ANALYSIS

So external analysis involves factors outside of the agency’s control and common tools business analysts use are; PEST analysis (political, economic , social and technology factors), Driving forces, Key success factors, Industry Life Cycle and Industry forces. One of the most prominent and more important tool is the PEST analysis, which many of you will be already familiar with. So here we go:

Political: This is where business activity in the industry is restricted due to either laws or interest groups. The first thing that comes to mind is the new property services regulatory authority. In a previous blog, we learned that several Irish agencies had to re-apply for their licences after failing to have the correct information prepared for the body. There is also new regulation set to be brought in next year on the monitoring of monies in client accounts.

Economic: These factors are mainly to do with the purchasing power and spending patterns in the market. The question a company usually asks themselves here is are people willing to spend on the services provided in the industry. In Ireland this, in my opinion, is a ‘no’ to the vast majority of landlords, tenants, home-sellers and any other customers of letting or estate agents. This is down to one simple factor of people not having as much money to spend anymore. The one area I might say the consumer is willing to spend on is the sale of a home, as it may be urgent or important to get the highest price obviously.

lettings-management-industry

What every agency in the Lettings Management Industry wants, a bunch of happy tenants, landlords & homeowners.

Social : Social factors affecting the industry include the population trends, family size, diversity and education. So thanks to Indexmundi.com, I gathered some stats on some of the key trends I think are effecting the industry currently. Things are good and bad, our population is still rising and currently stands at 4.72 Million, up from 4.67 last year. Net Migration rate is down from 4.5 to 1.6 per thousand. This means there is less and less people coming to Ireland. And lastly the birth rate is 15.8/1000 which again is down from 16.5 in 2010. In my opinion, these stats are not good for the industry.

Technological :  Technology is the final piece to this puzzle we have been trying to solve. Currently I would think technology is actually affecting areas of the property services industry such as management, sales and lettings, marketing and customer relations. As we become more and more fond of our devices and technologies, agencies must adapt to suit their market. This may involve having a digital strategy in marketing their services or a C.R.M system to manage their clients.

This analysis applies to the Lettings Management Industry specifically, but it can be applied to any business.

That’s it for this week’s business strategy blog. Thanks for reading!

by Rentview

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Property News Round Up

Another week and another bucket load of property news is making it’s way across the internet and into the property services community. Rentview bring you the top stories so far this week.

Property news

Monday 8th of October : The first nugget coming our way on Monday was the interesting news of a large influx in premium properties (worth 1 Million plus) going up for sale on the French property market. According to the Mail Online  the reason for the large increase in properties on the market is the proposed new higher tax of 75% for the wealthy people in France.

Another interesting story on Monday was the the upcoming legal changes on the sale of property in Ireland set to come in from January 2013. The Law society of Ireland chaired by a former exec of the property registration authority accessed the current regulation on the sale of property from 2010.

property-news

Tuesday 9TH October 2012:  Unusual news and quite horrifying for some as there were explosives going off  at a NAMA housing estate. There were two separate incidents, with methane and carbon monoxide causing damage to some of the properties in the estate, but luckily no parties were injured.

Tuesday we also got some good feedback from an interesting photo we posted to our Facebook via broadsheet highlighting a potential rental boom. The pic which was taken from a showing at a three bed property in Ranelagh last week showed a crowd of property-hungry people queuing up to view the cottage. Just the area or is this happening throughout Ireland?

Don’t forget to suggest any other property news or areas you may wish us to cover!

Thanks for reading!

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