How to market your HMO to student tenants
HMO’s are becoming increasingly popular, be it with private landlords, social housing as well as student accommodation.
Looking at student accommodation in particular, HMO’S are outsmarting luxury studio flats as they are half the price for tenants and cash cows for landlords because of their higher profit margins, making HMO’S a win-win situation. There is the additional benefit of the flexibility involved for both the landlord and tenant through the short and longer-term contracts available. However, the main goal here is to have 100% occupancy, so its essential to advertise your available rooms in the best places! Take consideration into the timing in which you place your add as most look a week before they move so a surge in activity and interest will happen within this time.
Website Choice
SpareRoom- This website is used to advertise rooms and is a well-known trusted website where tenants can find rooms. This has additional benefits of providing a ”free room rental index” which allows you to see demand for rooms in different locations across the UK. You can place your advert where it can be filtered by tenants so it is a refined search, be it non-smoking, pet free and whether you want to advertise a student or a professional tenant.
GumTree- This website has the benefit of being free, additionally the database tends to be of a younger demographic and a large proportion of students so ideal when you are looking to advertise for students alone.
Tenants4U- Through this website you can advertise your rooms on Zoopla and Rightmove for a very reasonable price of £30. With all these sites you should really invest in the use of attractive professional photographs to capture potential clients quickly. With HMO’S you must minimise the vacant periods in-between tenants!
Estate Agents- This can be useful to find potential local tenants and lift the work off your shoulders.
Social Media – advertising via social media sites such as Facebook can be good to find someone you know or that is recommended by friends and family. It narrows the search pool and especially in an HMO it can be useful to find people who know each other.
Find out more about our student housing software.
