Don't Forget the Investor

So you're selling the family home?

You've lived there for 15 years. A great home where you brought up the kids, catered the family Christmas every year, hosted who knows how many childrens birthday celebrations, held 'block' parties for the neighbours every second year, and managed the oh-so exciting general family get-togethers. The stereo-typical family home. Yep, that's how to present the property to the market - the ultimate, well proven, family home.

Not so fast. You may very well be missing out on an important sector of the market.

The investor.

The general assumption often is that the residential tenancy investor buys the "cheap and nasty" properties.  Those selling at less than 2/3rds of the median house price for your area, or in the more 'traditional" rental suburbs. Not the case anymore - never really was to be honest.

Investors buy all sorts of properties and many target mid-tier properties - good solid family homes. Why? Well, for one the tenants tend to be families (Gee, would never have guessed that!), interested in longer tenancies and are people who actually look after the place! Or perhaps higher end properties where the investor is targetting the short term rental market (eg tourist towns, or event based locations). Or even maybe where location is the number one priority and the investors target market, say high earning professionals, will gladly pay enormous rents to be located close to their jobs, cafes, restaurants and entertainment.

So how do you target the investor?

Pretty simple really - just add a rental assessment to your advertising description. How much rent would your propery generate? Depending upon the type of property the long term rental amount, or maybe the short-term event based return.

There are plenty of resources available to determine this out. The Department of Building and Housing can be particularly useful. Check out their survey of market rents. It is independent, detailed and quite useful. Or go to your local Property Management company and get them to do a rental assessment. A really savvy rental manager can do it on the spot- they know the area and the properties almost off-by-heart. If it's a specialist rental property eg event based, talk to the local expert - the specialist rental company or the council events organisation.

The investor buyer is constantly surveying property websites and other general advertising for new opportunities. Help them in their task by including a rental assessment. Making it up is not a good idea (in fact it is a very bad idea) - use the resources available, quote DBH statistics, or get a written quote from a general or specialist property management company.

If you are not including the investor in your marketing mix, you may be missing out.