What do renters look for in a perfect property?
With over half of Canadian renters planning to move once their current lease expires, this question is more important than ever for property owners.
We turned to the data for answers. Today, we’re sharing the top wants and needs of renters based on the latest data available to help you understand what changes to consider making to your property to attract more attention and sign your next tenant faster.
Note: Generally speaking (difficulty will depend on your specific situation), the changes suggested below are listed in order of easiest-to-implement to hardest-to-implement.
Before you invest in upgrading your actual property, have a look to see what can be improved from a marketing perspective. Do the photos accurately show how much space and natural lighting is available? Are features and amenities that tenants care about (more on this below) shown early in the photo gallery, and are they among the first things you talk about in your messaging?
Getting the answer to “yes” for these questions should be one of the first things you do to attract more renters. If you really want to put your marketer cap on, you can do the following:
You’ll learn what your specific renters care about as you keep track of the metrics above, but to give you an idea of what details generally they care about– and that need to be upfront in your messaging – here are renters’ top priorities:
Real estate is currently going through a digital renaissance. More than ever, prop tech is changing what tenants expect when it comes to researching, applying to, and maintaining their properties.
For property owners, meeting this expectation means allowing tenants to:
In other words, if there is a way to make your tenants’ lives easier through automation or technology, now’s the time to jump on it.
While not as necessary as during the pandemic when demand was lower, incentives are still an effective way to stand out and get tenants through the door.
This is especially true if your pricing, amenities, features, and/or other property characteristics pale in comparison to what your competitors offer - or even if they look the same.
What incentives to offer will depend on your specific property and applicants, but some of the more popular ones include:
More than 35% of Canadian renters don’t want to worry about committing to a place for an entire year. Not only that, but over 40% would be willing to pay more in order to have month-to-month flexibility rather than a fixed term. This presents a huge opportunity for property owners willing to offer shorter-term leases or month-to-month options.
And if the increased admin work of shorter-term leases scares you (more renters, more turnover, more documents, and so on), you can hand off the hard work to Rhenti's industry-leading software for leasing professionals, which we’re proud to say offers a 4-6X workload reduction.
As you might expect, many of today’s most sought-after amenities are largely by-products of the pandemic - amenities supporting at-home work, saving renters from having to do certain errands in public, and keeping them safe and secure.
That said, here are the amenities renters want most:
Other nice-to-haves are (in no particular order):
If you’re worried about not being able to offer these amenities - perhaps your property isn’t part of a larger building or organization with access to them and you don’t have the budget for construction or renovation yourself - one solution is to offer discounts on nearby gym memberships or co-working spaces.
If you do decide to go down the renovation route, and your property is based in Ontario, be sure to first read our Ontario rent increase guidelines to learn the relationship between renovating and increasing rent.
So, returning to our initial question of what do renters look for, you now hopefully have a better idea of what today’s renters want, how your property matches up with what they’re looking for, and, most importantly, what changes make sense for you to make to attract more tenants.
Discover more property owner insights by visiting our Rhenti blog.
The blog posts on this website are for the purpose of general introductory information. They can’t serve as an opinion or professional advice. Speak to a professional before making decisions related to your circumstances.