London

My ad isn't working well atall.

Occasionally people blame MoveFlat for this.

This section is fairly frank. Once you've read it, you might hate us for a bit.

Flatshare ads turn over quite fast on MoveFlat, and you are advertising to a perceptive and articulate audience on this site.

For every one flatshare ad that appears on the site there are in excess of 100 people visiting the site each day, looking for somewhere to live.

If your ad isn't moving, there are the two very boring explanations: price versus location.

If your room is in Lee, Clapton or Willesden Junction for example and you are quoting £650 per calender month, and the bit you have to write in words doesn't make entirely clear why it's this price, then we are be confident that you will get zero response, and we might have removed your ad already.

This is because people know they don't have to pay £650 pcm to live in Lee: With a bit of 'digging' around they can live in something a bit more more shabby, without a garden, in Zone 1 or 2, and maybe walk to work everyday.

If there's something really really special about your place, then you need to articulate this very well in your ad. Really well. And this doesn't mean you should jump into marketing hype: that is unlikely to work well on MoveFlat.

You need to be non-commercial in your 'hype': you are advertising somewhere to live. So superlatives such as 'beautiful' and 'fantastic' need to be commensurate. There certainly are beautiful and fantastic flats and houses in London but these are not commonly furnished with 1980's pine kitchen fitted cupboards, stand-alone gas cookers, pay-as-you-go electricity meters, swirley nylon carpets and baths and showers you know you aren't going to want to spend time in.

Look at other ads on the site. In our opinion, the ones that stand out as being good, are humane and chatty without being too long on 'requirements.' and somewhat modest. The best ads have an honesty and elegance to them and we have collected some data recently that suggests that these ads really do hit the mark with people looking.

Owner Occupiers

I can offer some expertise here. I did it for several years. There are some pitfalls :-

If you are an owner-occupier, and your room ad isn't getting responses, then you might need to get out of the mind-set of assuming there is an infinite resevoir of people out there looking for rooms: there isn't.

If it's your home, then it isn't their home and that's a basic fact that isn't lost on anyone who's looked for a room in London more than once.

Without doubt, your property will have more character and better decor than one dedicated to rental.

This will have no impact whatsoever on the price you can charge.

There is a tendency for owner occupiers to claim a premium of £100-£150 pcm over the going rent for their rooms. This isn't justified and is a commercial mistake. You will certainly lose money by doing this, because people will travel to see the middle-price rooms first. The 'good' people will be offered rooms within days, and they will never contact you because they have already found somewhere to live.

If you've recently landed a big mortgage on the assumption that you'll be able to get a tenant, and it's not happening, then you've got to make some tough decisions: you're going to have compromise on price or who you want living with you. I've done this, and it's not easy. But the easiest is price: Don't get into the mindset of because it's your home therefore it's really special and commands a 'special price.' It doesn't. It's your home not theirs, and it commands no premium in the market whatsover.

Compromise heavily on your price, not your tenant, because you'll be happier and you'll make more money.

If you find yourself balking at my above statement, and saying to yourself 'well I don't want to reduce the price because I want the right kind of tenant.' Then I would respectfully suggest to you that that is logically faulty, and the real question is 'do you wish to live with someone atall.'

I told you I was going to be frank.

You don't get good tenants by charging a premium. But you can avoid getting someone for your room by insisting on a price that people won't pay: if they won't pay then that means there's a gap between what they want and what you want

I can't emphasize this enough: if you don't let your room for two months because it is overpriced by £75, your net loss on an average room on this site is in excess of £1200: DON'T do this ! If your rent is expensive, your tenant has a much lower threshold for moving on (you'll never really know that's the reason they did.)

There can be a temptation to 'move' your property to a more desirable area. I strongly advise against this. the site is after all, big on maps and the users of the site are capable of reading them. In contrast to other sites, our distinct impression is that MoveFlat users are quite London-aware and will immediatelydismiss an ad that isn't where it claims to be. Be careful of this : Colliers Wood and Morden aren't Wimbledon, Peckham isn't East Dulwich 'Borders', Nine Elms and Stockwell aren't Clapham. Yes we realise these are all in South London, but without exception these are the areas from which owner-occupiers have written to us complaining of lack of response when they have misdescribed the location. Also, if you use sites where you are able to get a tenant who is new to the geography of London, he or she is soon going to realise it isn't where you said and relations will either sour or they will move to where they wanted to be originally.

This was all jolly harsh as promised wan't it.

'Rules' summarised as :-

Don't charge a lot of money and please don't get into the mindset of thinking that having a lodger is painless free money, it isn't.