Choosing the right real estate agent to manage a rental property (or properties) is a significant decision for investors. By understanding the factors that influence this decision, and aligning your service proposal accordingly, it’s possible to position yourself as a top-tier contender.

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Perhaps even more importantly, by taking the time to understand what investors value most, it becomes possible to ensure your business messaging consistently highlights your successes in these areas. This makes it far easier for investors to recognise and appreciate your value, and far more likely that they’ll be willing to pay fair fees as a result.

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You see, the truth is that customers don’t pay for products or services. They pay to have a specific problem – or set of problems – solved. The greater the problem, the greater they value the solution, and the more they are willing to spend to have it solved.

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What does that mean for you as a rental asset manager? Simple. Stop focussing on communicating how you deliver value (your daily tasks and workflows) and start communicating what that value is in the context of your investors’ core problems.

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Here’s how . . .

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The entire point of an investment is to turn a profit. Small wonder, then, that investors value agents with a proven track record of strong rental yields and capital growth.

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Achieving this requires (amongst other things) the ability to effectively set rental rates that balance income maximisation with tenant retention and vacancy minimisation. Agents who can demonstrate their skill in this area, achieving or exceeding market-average capital growth rates, are highly valued and highly sought-after.

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But how do you communicate these abilities? Calculating metrics like yield and capital growth take time – time you likely don’t have to spare. Fortunately, with WeconnectU, these calculations are done for you, freeing you to engage with your clients on the most important part: the results.

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Imagine being able to confidently discuss asset performance during annual check-ins using yield and capital growth as conversation points. What better way to showcase your value as an asset manager?

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Better yet, over time, you can use these figures and conversations to help investors explore options like leveraging their first property to expand their portfolios. The ability to use your skill and expertise to generate wealth for your investor is a foolproof way to reinforce your value and secure long-term client relationships.

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We’ll tell you a secret: investors don’t care about tenant vetting or arrears management processes. What they do care about is minimising default risks, reducing property damage, lowering turnover rates and ensuring steady cash flow.

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Of course, these are all things thorough tenant screenings and effective rent collection and arrears management processes contribute towards. Showcasing this value is just a matter of communicating the information in the right way.

With efficient workflows and access to the right tools like WeconnectU, you can conduct thorough screenings and maintain high compliance standards, securing – and retaining – better quality tenants who create less hassle down the line. You can also leverage WeconnectU’s automation features to unlock additional income streams and reduce arrears rates through proactive communication and effective follow-up procedures.

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But most importantly, you can communicate the effects of all this work to your clients, proving your value with measurable improvements in the areas investors actually care about: reliability, profitability and risk mitigation.

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Investors expect incoming and outgoing inspections. You’re not going to win any hearts or minds by focusing on your ability to deliver those basics. Interim inspections, on the other hand, present a great opportunity to add tangible value as an asset manager.

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Interim inspections help to ensure tenants are holding up their end of the lease agreement throughout their tenancy – not just at the beginning and end. This enables rental managers to identify issues early and take proactive steps to address them, keeping their investors fully informed through detailed reports along the way.

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This not only helps to minimise maintenance costs, avoid vacancies, ensure healthy escalations and reduce tenant loss, it also draws attention to your diligence in protecting and improving the property asset’s value.

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Of course, without the right tools, reporting of this level could be extremely time-consuming and fiddly to get right.

Fortunately, WeconnectU’s integration with RedRabbit means the ultimate, value-adding, professional, online property condition reports are only a few clicks away.

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Convenience is a commodity. Anything you can do to make your investors’ lives easier is going to add to your value in their eyes. Taking the lead on maintenance management not only makes investors' lives easier, it also enhances asset desirability and value through proactive upkeep and planned improvements. That’s tangible value even the most demanding investor can’t ignore.

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Maintenance management doesn’t have to be a huge chore, either. WeconnectU enables you to build and leverage a network of reliable contractors using fully transparent maintenance processes that ensure prompt responses and competitive repair rates.

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The resulting experience is seamless and pain-free for you as well as your investors, reinforcing their trust in your skill and professional value and forging strong and long-lasting working relationships.

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For investors, trust is paramount, and compliance and accurate financial reporting are cornerstones of trustworthy property management.

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Accurate reporting provides a clear picture of property (and management) performance, empowering informed decision-making and fostering an environment of transparency and trust.

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Compliance, on the other hand, ensures legal and regulatory adherence, protecting your investors against the serious consequences of non-lawful rental property management.  

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Good compliance isn’t just about avoiding the unpleasant consequences of failure, however. The fact is, tighter legislation raises the bar for entry into the industry, making it harder for unskilled and unscrupulous operators to flourish. It also reduces financial and legal risk for compliant businesses – a great way to enhance your individual business’ reputation while simultaneously fast-tracking the professionalisation of the industry as a whole.

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This, in turn, improves the public’s perception of property management and makes it easier to recruit more qualified people, charge fair fees for professional services, and achieve greater profits overall.

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The All-in-One Solution

As you likely know by now, we’re big fans of all-in-one solutions. We spent enough time juggling multiple tools to perform basic workflows back in our own rental management days to know the unbearable inefficiencies of that approach.

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As such, it’s an ongoing wonder that WeconnectU remains the only end-to-end rental asset management ecosystem in South Africa. We’re also the only ones that offer RedRabbit – the world’s only solution combining inspections and maintenance management in a single, seamless workflow – as a fully integrated element of our Rental Asset Management Solution.

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Our solution has been deliberately designed to share data seamlessly between workstreams (including RedRabbit and more) in real time. This enables us to create massive efficiencies for WeconnectU users, leveraging workflows that span all rental management departments and functions, with no delays, no incompatibilities and absolutely no blind spots.

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As a result, our users are able to unlock every ounce of value from the effort they put in, creating extraordinary customer experiences that place their services in a completely different league to the competition.