From furniture and lighting to bedding and tabletop items, there is a lot that can be done to improve a property’s internal appearance and give it that homely feel; helping to showcase the impressive features available and maximise the use of space, ensuring that the home is perfect for prospective renters.
Presentation will be key in 2019; immaculately presented rental properties will be the first to benefit from a premium, according to Tim Hassell, managing director at lettings only company, Draker, based in London.
Home staging or ‘dressing’ as the professionals call it, is not interior design, but rather a marketing tool to ensure that the property appeals to the widest possible audience of relevant renters and not to the personal taste of the landlord.
Staging a property to let opens new and innovative marketing opportunities, Hassell says, as it gives landlords and letting agents a platform to showcase a stunning property to the full.
“It's quite simple, the more effort a landlord puts into presentation - the more likelihood of getting a higher price.”
Hassell advises: “The lettings market will not 'warm up' for another eight weeks or so. So now is the time to put your investment property to the front of the queue, especially if the property has just become vacant.
“There are often small improvements that you can make to the presentation that will make a considerable difference to someone who walks through the door”.
Dress to let may not be suited to every property, but there is no denying the possible impacts that it can have, with many able to offer a flexibility of design schemes to suit the individual characteristics and space requirements of different properties, to ensure that the property is warm at this time of year.
Hassell added: “A cold property will have an immediate impact on a tenant and can easily dissuade them, in fact if a property is cold some tenants will run straight back out of the door; so cosy wins every time.”
Top tip: Unfurnished properties with no overhead lighting can be a challenge as light is key. If a rental property has no easy way of being illuminated for viewings, it becomes harder to let in January/February because by 5pm it is already dark, reducing viewing opportunities by three hours every day.
So being clever with lighting and arranging viewings during daylight hours can boost your window of opportunity.
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The heading for this article "Immaculately presented rental properties will get a ‘higher price’" is a statement of the bleedin obvious!
Another non news item to be ignored.
Perhaps in a market where there is a reducing supply of rental properties with tenant demand exceeding supply dressing a property won't be that important.
Desperate tenants won't be fussed about dressing they will just want the property address.
As you suggest the bleedin obvious in a normal.market makes sense.
Plus just having a property nice shows some respect for the tenant client.
It serves no purpose to rub the desperate tenant's nose in it by not bothering to make a property presentable.
But a LL doesn't have to go overboard etc!
If a property is correctly priced and is in the correct location then in the current market it should let out pretty quickly!!
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