What Renters Pay More For
Recently a survey conducted by ‘farawayfurniture.com’ asked 3,752 tenants what features in a property they would be happy to pay extra for in rent. They split up the categories into more personal property features and communal property features. Although not everything is necessarily applicable, we will cover all the points just in case.
For us as landlords, the most important thing is that our tenants are happy and feel like they are getting their money’s worth, so that we can continue to work with them in the future. Some of these features may even help us achieve this and increase the demand for your property on the market.
So, here is the features and the percentage of renters that would pay for said features.
1. Pets Allowed (at £24 more a month) 32%
2. High Speed Internet (at £19 more a month) 31%
3. Parking (at £20 more a month) 29%
4. Garden (at £25 more a month) 27%
5. Satelite/Cable TV (at £23 more a month) 22%
Top of the list of attractive factors for tenants is allowing pets.
Recent research by the ‘Dogs Trust’ found that 78% of pet owners have trouble finding places that allow pets, so in allowing them into your property you may find an increase in demand for it. This increase, as well as the extra you will be able to charge in
rent, may also offset any reservations or costs you may have regarding the allowance of pets. A great thing about this feature is that you may not have to change anything about the property. However, it is important that if you want to add this ‘feature’ to make sure you detail the conditions of having pets in the property. This would include what pets you allow (we don’t want anyone turning up with a horse), cost of potential damage and who must look after the pet if the tenant is unable to.
High-Speed Internet
The second ‘feature’ is high-speed internet, and this doesn’t necessarily mean you must provide this but you can make sure that the area your property in is able to get high speed internet. Virgin fibre is a popular provider but is limited to certain areas, so it may be worth checking with companies like this to make sure your property has access to this feature. The third most popular characteristic is a parking space, this isn’t always possible and definitely isn’t worth removing floor space for. However, when viewing properties, it may be worth considering this potential increase in rent when buying a property.
The final very important attribute is a garden while again there isn’t much we can do about this one, this information could make you reconsider building over the garden.
As you can see there is a big drop off in interest for the next four features, but we will still consider them. Most of these final features are also more appropriate for flats and/ or estates. So, the first is a balcony, these are difficult to add to a normal property and are probably less important if there is a garden present as there is already outdoors space. On-site management and drop boxes are very much more appropriate for flats and thankfully don’t make much of a difference to rents. Bike storage can be cheap to add if there is spare space but again makes such a small difference it will be unlikely to pay back any investment. These last four qualities have such a small number of tenants that are willing to pay more for them that they can likely be ignored, but if they are present in a property already then, they may be considered in working out rental price.
Next week we will be telling you the most wanted features for communal properties. In the mean-time check out one of our FREE Property Investing Seminars up and down the country!
