An article by Lisa Pentland

This is a term that has been widely used in the real estate sales market for years. More recently, largely due to new technology and digitally generated landlord investor reports, the term is being used in the property management industry.

When fully understood and exploited, measuring and understanding the implications of your days on market will give you a huge competitive advantage from pitching for new business and negotiating a higher management fee to tenant retention and a higher customer satisfaction rate.

Customers are far better educated than ever before and with the deluge of content marketing, they’re becoming more sophisticated every day.

Don’t get left behind and don’t let your clients be better educated on all things property investment than you! Not if you want the big bucks!!! It stands to reason that if you’re going to be paid well to do a job you should have greater “knowledge and ability” than your customer.

So how can you leverage your days on market?

First of all what gets measured gets done, so the 2 things you must know are:

1. Your agencies days on market total and for each of the suburbs you operate in
2. The average days on market for each of the suburbs you operate in

You’ve all heard the saying “time is money” well please see a working example below;

Estimated rent for Mr & Mrs Jones property - $500 / week or $71.43 / day.

Your agencies days on market – 12 days

The average days on market for the suburb – 21 days

Your prospective landlord is likely to be $642.87 better off just by listing their property with you rather than your competitors.

Even if they pay an extra 2% commission for a year 7% rather than 5%, they are still $122.87 better off! There’s a win win situation for you and your client.

So this is all well and good if your days on market are lower than your competitors but what if they aren’t?

Well, this is why they’re called key performance indicators. If your days on market are higher than the average, then you have some procedural reviews and some improvements to carry out. On the flip side if you’re not better than the average, your clients are disadvantaged by listing with you.

There must be a reason why your agency is taking longer to lease properties than other agencies, the great news is these are all fixable. Here’s a trouble shooting guide:

Problem	Fix
Overpricing new properties to market	Educate your prospective landlords prior to them coming to market. Set up a template for a weekly update on what’s been leased, what’s come to market, price adjustments and the average trending days on market. Is it stable, going up or down?
Failing to communicate and educate your landlords adequately for them to review their pricing	Implement a “Weekly Landlord Communication Schedule for Advertised Properties” This includes daily communications via text and email, but must include 1 comprehensive weekly activity report (a template including statistics will be most effective) and at least 2 phone calls seeking instructions.
Failing to proactively identify a falling market and chasing it down	Monitoring the number of inquiries, attendees, applications, quality applications and days on market weekly, will allow you to have pro-active conversations with landlords and prospective landlords so they can quickly make the best decisions for their situation.

Knowing your days on market, having the ability to read and successfully interpret them for your landlords is a sure sign of your professionalism, identifying you as an industry expert with both the ability and the knowledge to get the best outcome for your clients.