In a time with a lot of uncertainty, there is one thing that has been rather stable: Vacancies

The Corona crisis has not yet had a major impact on the housing industry with this year’s vacancy rates relatively stable at around 5%. Even in Denmark’s fourth largest city, Aalborg, which has previously been one of the cities that has taken one of the hardest hits, it now seems to lighten up a bit, as the housing turnover as of October 2020 has fallen 1.0 percentage points since July and is now at 6.9%. Here, Aalborg is only surpassed by Copenhagen and the rest of Northern Jutland, which are at 7.3% and 8.1%, respectively.

Even though the numbers have largely developed positively, one can always reflect on one’s own actions and consider whether you as a landlord can help improve these numbers. It almost sounds too good to be true, as there can’t be a recipe to avoid vacancies, right? Well yes and no.

There is no 1:1 solution on how to avoid vacancies, but there are many indications that reviews can affect a business both positively and negatively. That is why positive reviews are so important. It turns out that some tenants will completely avoid signing a lease if they see negative reviews.

A survey conducted by SafeOnNet shows that over 80% of Danes research businesses online when they consider entering into collaboration with them. If these Danes find negative reviews, 70% won’t collaborate with the business. Therefore, there’s a lot to gain, if a business focuses on the reviews posted online. Here, the platform Trustpilot is a good place to start if you want to try to avoid vacancies.

If you look at some of the largest rental companies’ Trustpilot scores and read some of the reviews, it is evident that especially poor service recurs as one of the main reasons why tenants leave negative reviews. Several people write that the landlord took too long to respond to enquiries, didn’t prioritise the tenant or was somewhat unreachable.  

So what does that mean to you? The trends and tendencies we see as helping the industry are: 

• Understand your tenants’ needs
• Reply to emails as quickly and efficiently as possible 
• Be proactive, clear and transparent in your communication
• Continuous updates on on-going inquiries
• Spend time providing great service 

If you need help with just that, and if you want to make the communication more manageable for both you and your tenants, then this is exactly what our app can help you with. Our app gathers all the communication between landlord and tenant one place so it doesn’t just get more manageable for you to keep track of, but also strengthens the relation between you and your tenants through effective communication. As an added bonus, our system can detect when a lease is up and automatically post a listing for you. That way, our system actively helps reduce vacancies.

Book a demo with our employee today and see how we can help you!