Does your rental agent do opens on the weekend?

I’m looking to employ a New Pm and was going to send her an email and turn up to one of her opens this weekend.

Just looked at her company profile and noticed that they don’t have any opens booked for any of their 59 currently for rent properties.

Did some searching of the top 3 agencies in the area and none of them have any as well.

Am I missing something we open our properties every weekend and at least once during the week + private inspections when required.

But most of the enquiries and applications come from the weekend.

What does your Property manager do?

Best place to check is on realestate.com.au under inspections

http://www.realestate.com.au/rent/by-dadtem/inspection-times-1
 
I can't understand it. I'm a Property Manager and I always like to have weekend opens, week day opens - if I need to open a property after hours, early morning or a Sunday to lease it I will!! Makes no sense to leave it vacant longer than needed.

That being said they are in the top 3 for a reason.....

If we don't book it in for weekends then you have landlords on the phone asking why there is no weekend inspections??? Must be nice to be able to manage a portfolio and only work 9-5 Monday - Friday!! :D

Perhaps it's a slightly different culture down here in VIC..........??
 
My PM's a young, good-looking guy who does home-opens on weekends. I'm happy with the service of three PM's I have used in Brisbane and I got rid of one PM previously that I wasn't happy with. When I was looking for a rental property for myself in Brisbane I found it a nightmare. Many properties were listed as 'available now'. I'd call the agency and they would advise I couldn't view for 5 days as they weren't doing an open until then. You'd wait 5 days, go to property and find the garage was really just an open carport, so the garage where i was going to store half of my possesions wasn't suitable. Wait another few days for a property, then find out in a roundabout way you were knocked back because the Asian owner only wanted Asian tenants, wait another few days for another home open.... We finally got accepted and found a suitable property but had no electricity for the first day due to electrical faults, I was surprised it wasn't sorted earlier.
 
I dont understand why. When we were renting and when we were looking for our PPOR we just ignored all listings that didn't have a weekend open.

Even if the listing said "call for inspection", just ignored it.

And while I'm here, can I say the 1 thing more annoying than opens on a weekday are listings with 1 or 2 photos. I dont understand this practice either. Its as if the agent couldnt be bothered doing his job, throw a couple photos up (sometimes out of focus) she'll be right mate.
 
In Perth it's pretty much the norm for PMs to only have home opens on weekdays around 5pm. Sucks for employed people who want to apply.

It was a condition of me employing my PM that they did weekend home opens for my properties - I want as many well employed people as I can get !!
 
I have always planned one weekday viewing and one weekend viewing with my pm untill its leased. But in saying that so far all my properties have been leased first open home which happened to be the weekday viewing.

Cheers
 
Always weekend opens and private inspections!

A previous company I worked for would not do tenanted property opens on weekends, as there wasn't another agent available to help "guard" the tenants possessions or talk to people coming through and asking questions.

Maybe they have the same rule? (Although 59 properties all tenanted is high, depending on RR numbers)
 
its a prereq for us on a managing agent.

2 opens, 1 late night, 1 Saturday and flexible by appointment.

We ring up and be a fake tenant at another property to see how flexible they are around appointment times and if possible try and go to an other open of theirs.

Ultimately people want the easiest option, looking for a rental is a hassle and doesn't have the same romance as looking for a purchase. One of the main reasons i will make appointments for when we are buying is i know so many others won't so we can often low ball a little.
 
its a prereq for us on a managing agent.

2 opens, 1 late night, 1 Saturday and flexible by appointment.

Ditto (except I'm not real fussed about the evening opens). If my PMs didn't do Sat opens then they wouldn't be my PM for long!

There's an agency in one of my areas that does opens for 15 mins in the middle of the day. No Sat or evenings. No surprise their properties take weeks or months to rent!

We ring up and be a fake tenant at another property to see how flexible they are around appointment times and if possible try and go to an other open of theirs.

Being a fake customer is always a good way of determining performance.

RP, or other agents - How successful are mid week evening opens, compared to Sat's?
 
RP, or other agents - How successful are mid week evening opens, compared to Sat's?[/QUOTE]

It depends on the property and the area. I've found private inspections to be most successful over the years. If I have someone who really wants to view the property I'll book a time that suits them. I'll advertise that time online as an open and it's generally leased. I met a woman at a property last week at 5.30pm...... after there had been an open there that morning. She works odd hours and was working the next day, her only afternoon off...... turns out she's a fabulous tenant and if I'd been unwilling to go out in the cold my landlord would have missed out........

I think the best thing to do is to work in with the people who are looking. If they want a weekend open show them on the weekend, they prefer weekdays? show them on the weekdays!!
 
We had an empty property about this time last year - PM was only interested in 15 minute open houses about 10am midweek.

After 3 weeks it was still empty. I work not far from the house and dropped by during one open - the very young PM hadn't even opened the door, she was sitting in her car texting on her mobile. Gave me an excuse that she would have opened if anyone turned up.
 
I do opens on Saturdays.

Well - they're not 'opens' as that's illegal in QLD without the tenant's permission - which they're almost never happy to give. If the property is vacant then no problem, but almost all of our advertised rentals are tenanted.

So we hold 'registered inspections' on Saturdays (legally).

Turnout rate is typically terrible. Even after confirming and the reminder SMS messages in the morning, we are lucky to get 50% of registered and confirmed people showing up.

Our office rents about 50 properties per month, on average, so 12 per week on average. Maybe 1 per week might have come from a Saturday inspection.

Generally I find that most people take one day off when looking for a rental and then cram as many inspections in to that day as possible. We get calls like "I need to see it at 10.40 on Thursday morning as that's my day for inspections".

We won't stop doing Saturday inspections, as it does pull in that tenant who can ONLY do Saturdays - but it's certainly not the holy grail in my experience.

Matt
 
Well I'll be doing opens this Saturday - I try to keep them in the warmest part of not so warm days, nobody gets out of bed early on a cold weekend! The weather is forecast for rain so I'm pretty sure that I will be lucky to get 1 or 2 people at each open. However, all week people will walk in the office wanting to see these properties 'now' or 'in an hour'. That is where I'll lease properties. I always make any of my properties 'inspect by appointment' as well as opens so people will approach me.

I'll let you all know my turn out on Saturday just for anyone who is interested :).
 
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