Advertising
All of our properties are advertised on the following 5 websites:
These websites cover the vast majority of potential tenants looking for a property. Almost 100% of tenants we place have found their new home on the internet. An important factor to note is that the best tenants tend to look for properties online.
All rental enquiries are received through Viewing Tracker, a system that ensures that we are able to:
Attract initial interest
Keep track of all enquiry
Keep interested parties updated
Arrange efficient viewings to get the most people viewing your property
Streamline the letting process to keep your vacancy rate to a minimum
Head to raywhitetimaru.viewingtracker.com for a look, or check out one of our advertised rental properties on rwtimaru.co.nz.
Viewings are held free of charge for our clients. We will have an unlimited number of viewings, until we locate a suitable tenant for your property. All attendees for viewings are booked through Viewing Tracker (see above). Many viewings are held after-hours, at no extra cost to clients, so that those that work normal hours are able to view easily.
We also have a database of potential tenants. People looking for a rental property can enter themselves into this database on our website, and some are entered by Ray White as we come across potential tenants.
All those entered into this database are automatically emailed when a property that meets their requirements becomes available – helping to attract more interest in our clients’ properties from the start.
Tenant Selection
Tenant selection is one of the most important areas of property management. The reliability of rental income and the proper upkeep of a rental property depends entirely upon getting the right tenants.
Unfortunately the pool of potential tenants does always contain a select group of extremely poor tenants who consistently default on their rent payments and who have zero respect for other people’s property. This group is small and its members are generally obvious (or become so after a few checks).
There are a minority of tenants that are not totally unreliable, but who make irregular rent payments, and/or often get into rent arrears, and/or fail to maintain properties to an acceptable standard.
Our goal is to avoid both groups of tenants, and while not 100% guaranteed, our strict checks go a long way towards achieving that goal.
Once we have completed all reference, credit, ID, Tribunal database and internet checks, all suitable applicants are considered by the owner, with as much or as little guidance from us as desired.
Checks Performed
We require a reference from any applicant’s current (or latest) landlord and current (or latest) employer as minimum reference checks. We verify that the person giving the landlord reference does in fact own the property. The employment check gives a good indication of the stability of the applicant, and their income potential (if income is not stated on the application).
Sometimes if an applicant is self-employed or has owned their own home, other checks will need to be performed (such as verifying ownership of a home, or bank statements showing income).
Photo ID is required to verify the applicant’s identify.
A credit check is performed to check the financial history of the applicant, including any defaults, bankruptcies and the like.
The Tenancy Tribunal database is searched, which will show any Tribunal hearings which were brought against an applicant (or in some cases, that an applicant has brought against a landlord).
Internet checks include Google and social media (Facebook etc) checks. This can be very telling and often reveals information such as criminal convictions.
These checks, along with intuition as a guide, help to ensure only good applicants are considered as tenants.