With fewer properties on the rental market and more Estate Agents offering a letting service, letting agents will need to diversify to retain previous years’ revenues.
Letting agency business model changing
According to the the latest DAFT report issued on the 11th of February, the availability of Rental property in the capital is at a 6 year low and 4 years nationally. In fact there is only a 1/4 of the amount of properties listed today that were listed back in 2009 in the capital.
With the average tenancy in place at 19 months the tenancy churn is not there for agents to make fees more regularly. That is unless an agent gets a property to full management where they can take a fee every month. The Rentview team speak with letting agents on a daily basis. These agents are looking at property and rent management as a way of increasing revenue and being able to forecast revenue month on month. Something that they are not able to do in a let-only model.
Currently there are just over 2000 properties marketed in Dublin and a pool of approx 200 agencies. That’s an average of only 10 units per agency. This does not take into effect the number of ghost units being advertised also (units which are let agreed or marketed with a number of agents) … and they say the Taxi industry is overcrowded!
So what else are letting agents doing to increase revenue? Well they are being creative and flexible as to what their landlords require. Some are offering complete inventories, midterm inspections, lease renewals. In fact, we even came across a few agents who are offering marketing services, to save the landlord the work of marketing properties on online portals. So as we can see, many are offering bespoke services to suit a landlord rather than just a let-only or a let and manage service.
How is your letting agency standing out from the crowd and keeping solid revenue coming in? Is your letting agency business model changing? You may also be interested on our blog posting finding landlords.
by Andreas Riha