A lot of people are getting on board with HMOs at the moment, mainly due to the lucrative investment they can be when done properly. The Yields and cash flow are attractive to investors over other property investments, however they are only lucrative if your rooms are full!

Typically, the first two rooms (assuming they are full) will cover your mortgage, the third will cover your bills, the fourth any voids and maintenance costs and then the fifth and above gives your profit. Obviously this means, if you have a 5 bed HMO and one of the rooms is empty, then you are not making any profit. Obviously, if you have six then two rooms would need to be empty to not make any profit.

So it is in your best interest to ensure your rooms are always full. But how do you go about doing that?

There are numerous ways to fill rooms in a shared house, some well-known, others less so. The most common way of filling your rooms, and the one most HMO investors rely on is using room letting portals. The most popular of which is spareroom.com. Many landlords just use spareroom to advertise their rooms, which is fine as it is the most popular for tenants also. However just by using this tactic, you might well be missing out on tenants from other means. That is another blog post.

For this one I want to focus on getting the most of out of Spareroom and how best to utilise it to ensure you let your rooms faster and maximise its full potential.

Here are 4 ways to help your Spareroom advert stand out:

You need a GOOD Advert

Firstly, make sure you have a good advert with a catchy title, not just a few generic sentences.

This was an advert I recently saw on Spareroom and just shows how landlords are not using Spareroom to the best of its ability:

‘Room to rent’

‘Great house, No DSS, No Couples, Bills included’

If you’re going to do that you might limit the number of people wanting to view your rooms.

You need a comprehensive advert to sell your room. This might include things such as:

A really catchy title like ‘Luxury House Share in City Centre’. What are the benefits of your property over any others? What’s included in your house/room? The location of itTransport routes and locations. Local amenities. Any fees you are charging and the amount of deposit required. The process for taking a room. A bit about you as the landlord.

The possibilities are endless but the more you can sell your room the better.

A word of caution though, don’t make the advert too long otherwise people will be put off and won’t want to read it all and will give up.

 

Take Good Quality Photos

The next thing you need to make your advert standout is good quality photographs showing off your room and the rest of the house, especially the kitchen and bathroom. Ideally get professional photographs taken. You wouldn’t believe that some landlords don’t even bother putting up photos at all. If this is the case, a potential tenant will just scroll straight past it.

 

Take a Video

You could even take it one step further and take a video of your house and room, something that we do at Relo which has proved to be extremely beneficial. Take a walk-through tour of the property pointing out the benefits such as 50-inch tv or bike storage. Very few landlords take advantage of video on Spareroom and you will certainly stand out if you do so.

 

Have a Floor Plan

The last key thing we have found to work well is to put up a floor plan of the property and mark the room which is available on it so tenants can get a feel for where the room is in relation to the rest of the property. You can buy really cheap floor plan software and we promise it will help your Spareroom adverts stand out over others.

Hopefully these tips will help you and your room advert standout among the hundreds of others to ensure you fill your rooms first.

If you would like any further help or have any questions on filling rooms using Spareroom then we would be delighted to hear from you. On the other hand, if you don’t fancy putting in the time to make your adverts stand out then why not talk to us about how we can help you do so along with our other secret tactics to getting your rooms filled faster by using Relos fully managed service for your HMO.