Let’s be honest, the current situation with Covid – 19 has affected the property industry in a many different ways.
The property sales been booming due to short term tax reliefs.
It is what has saved many of the estate agencies during these challenging times.
The lettings and management situation is very different however.
Especially the HMO industry in London.
The way people are working has changed forever. Some people have decided to continue working from home some people have preferred to return to office. However there is a great number of people who decided that working from home is much more convenient. And in most cases you can achieve much more if you have a dedicated working space and not much distraction s from co workers.
As the location is no longer a vital criteria for many people, we have experience our central London rooms to be very difficult to let. Many people have decided to move to bigger accommodation. Or even their own one bedroom property for similar price as a room in shared property in Central London.
During the times of change its vital to adopt to change. To know your numbers and make decisions quickly.
If an empty room costs you £40 a day, reducing the rent for £100 will save you from bigger long term loss.
We had a situation where landlord refused to reduce a rent for a room. The room was vacant for more than 3 month. On 4th month landlord agreed to reduce the rent and room was rented straight away. If decision would been made sooner, this would have saved £2.5 k loss in rents. And marketing and viewing costs during the 4 month period.
Be flexible.
There are many ways you can work around the current situation and it does require extra work and extra effort. Many or our team members including myself work late nights to get all rooms rented for our landlords, but you got to keep going.
Contact your previous tenants if they would like to rent any of the rooms for a special offer. Communicate with your tenants who decided to move out, if they would reconsider it for a rental reduction and maybe a special offer, free room cleaning once a month for example.
Stay alert on social media relocation groups, local universities, hospitals, relocation companies abroad. Everything could help.
And if you have vacant rooms and not extra time to invest to rent them, considering a help from agency might be a good solution to avoid long term financial loss.
Staying open minded and focused on solutions is best we all can do to help the lettings industry rise and shine again in London.
