Days on the market to find a tenant = 10 Days
Lease renewal rate to keep your tenant for another year = 73%
We are following up on our traditional year-end newsletter we sent to you at the beginning of January. In that letter, we evaluated our company's progress in 2016, highlighted a lot of our strengths and mentioned a couple of places where we saw room for improvement in 2017. As you may remember, we set out to concentrate on two things in 2017 to improve our service to you:
1. Reduce the number of days it takes us to place a tenant
2. Improve our tenant retention and renew more leases
Now that the first quarter of the year has closed, we would like to update you about our progress.
We have placed extra effort into negotiating with tenants to get them to renew their current leases. We are using creative techniques like changing our dates for various parts of the renewal process to create a sense of urgency in our tenants. Renewals are also increased through a more thorough customer review process that allows tenants to express their experience with Service Star. These reviews have allowed us to consistently improve our level of service.
As a result, our numbers have improved. The annualized renewal rate for the first quarter of 2017 was 73 percent. What does this number mean to you? It means that only a quarter of our tenants are moving out each year. In other words, your tenant will stay an average of four years at your property. Our goal is to keep these numbers up for the rest of the year. They are very good, and we will continue to work to improve them.
Another major improvement during the first quarter was through implementing marketing videos in our advertising. The video has helped us to find tenants earlier. Even when your property is still occupied by your last tenant, we can show the unit through the video tours. The videos have given rentals a boost among out-of-town renters who can rent a home with confidence even when they have never physically visited the property. Last month, 50% of our homes were leased while the old tenant was still in them. Our properties are on the market for an average of 10 days right now. Again, we aim to keep these numbers great and improve them even more.
If you have any questions or comments, please let us know. As always, we look forward to a bright future filled with innovative ways to help our property investors.
