Hi,
I am starting a new business to advertise pet friendly rental properties online, and would like to hear your opinions about this new project. I am new to this forum.
From my research over 60% of tenants are looking for rental properties that allow pets, so I think my business has potential. The advantage of having responsible pet owning tenants is that the tenants stay longer as they do not have to hide or give up their pets (fewer vacancies), and people who can demonstrate that they are responsible about keeping animals (desexed, obedience trained, go to the vet regularly etc) are more likely to be responsible about looking property. Some tenants have also mentioned that they would be willing to pay more for the privilege of a pet friendly property. Others have added value to properties by building fences out of their own pocket. From a cashflow point of view there seems to be lots of benefits.
The benefits for tenants is that they do not have to give up a much loved family member to an animal shelter when they are moving house. Potential tenants can join a forum and register for email alerts when properties that meet their criteria become available. They could also upload references, pet resumes, and apply for properties online. I don't plan to charge tenants to use any features of the website, as I will use the data from property alerts to compile statistics about where there is strong demand/what tenants are looking for/what pets they have/how much they will pay. Investors can then choose whether or not to advertise a property on the website based on these statistics. Property owners and property managers that advertise properties can choose to pay for each ad or a monthly subscription to post multiple ads. There will be pageview statistics to show how effective an advertising campaign is. Advertisers can tick boxes to show what pets will be considered for a particular property, and how many animals will be considered. This will avoid problems of tenants bringing unsuitable animals eg. 10 big noisy dogs into a city apartment. Full disclosure could also mean people are less likely to sneak in unsuitable animals. My goal is to create a website with useful features that will add value to rental property advertising, but I am not sure what other features to include that will be valuable to people.
What are your experiences with pet owning tenants, both positive and negative? Do you have any special requirements from tenants eg. steam cleaning carpets, pest treatment on departure? What features do you value in online property advertising? Where you currently advertise vacant properties, and how much do you pay? How do you currently track the effectiveness of various advertising campaigns? For an advertising campaign to be considered effective, how many views or enquiries do you like to have? Would you be interested in advertising on this website? Thank you for your time!
Cheers,
Yen
Rent With Pets
Hi Yen and welcome aboard.
This is a copy and paste from another forum where I responded to your thread.
I'm all for allowing pets in IPs and have generally had good experiences with tenants who have had dogs or cats.
Can't you filter searches on realestate.com and the other larger property search sites to find rentals that allow pets? If so, you're coming up against massive competition for your website listings as I'd assume that the majority of PMs would look to list their rentals here first.
Cheers
Jamie
Jamie Moore | Pass Go Home Loans Pty Ltd
http://www.passgo.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeMortgage Broker assisting clients Australia wide Email: [email protected]
Thank you so much for your help, Jamie
I'll cross post my comments from the other forum as well. All suggestions and feedback would be valuable for me to build a business that succeeds and can help others.______________________________________________________________________________________
Thank you very much, Jamie REA is my biggest competitor as they have the highest market share, and they do provide a very good service. Although they are very expensive, most PMs advertise there because REA gets a lot of traffic and the website is well maintained. Plus they have lots of resources for investors. The only way for me to compete is to differentiate my service, and to provide greater value for money for my clients.
One way that my website will be different from REA is that anybody can post an ad. REA only allows agents to advertise properties, which is a business model that serves them well (exclusivity for agents). Their main focus is property sales rather than rentals. About 40% of investors choose to self manage, which essentially shuts them out of advertising on REA. Domain allows investors to advertise without an agent, but the fees are quite expensive. Anybody can advertise a property on Rent With Pets, individual investors with very few properties can pay for each advertisment. PMs and agents can subscribe monthly to advertise unlimited properties for no extra charge, and also have a page to advertise their business. For the investor that wants to advertise for "free", they are encouraged to hire one of the PMs with a subscription, or ask their own PM to subscribe
Yes REA and Domain have a "pet friendly" filter that is very helpful for many people. However some pet friendly investors are reluctant to use it. The filter doesn't allow them to specify what animals would be considered so they are afraid of getting too many enquiries from people that own pets which are unsuitable for their property, which they feel would waste their time. If REA decides in the future to provide additional filters for "pet friendly" properties, then they could become really tough competition!
The ability to check property alerts/ real time demand for a certain type property by postcode, and the price that potential customers will pay is another way that I can differentiate my service. Any suggestions on how I can provide more value for investors, or differentiate my service are most welcome. Thanks!
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I'll cross post my comments from the other forum as well. All suggestions and feedback would be valuable for me to build a business that succeeds and can help others.You must be logged in to reply to this topic. If you don't have an account, you can register here.
