According to UNESCO, Malaysia is one of the most popular educational destinations among international students searching for high quality courses at a low cost.
As most of them are usually too young to have an income, minimizing living cost is a common priority to them especially when it comes to property renting.
Fully or partially furnished properties will always be at the top of their list when they are only staying for a couple of school semesters.
To be one of the most preferred rental properties among students, you need to start putting yourself in their shoes and think about what is important to them.
Here’s What You Can Do To Improve Your Rental Properties For Students:
1. Focus more on the interior design
If you’re targeting young people, you better design your unit to be young and hip. After all, no young person will be attracted to old looking units with out of fashion furniture. If they are not attracted, why would they choose your unit?
If your unit is different, beautiful and relevant, you have the power to choose your tenants. If your unit is like every other unit, you’ll just have to wait until someone chooses you.
2. Encourage space sharing
Lifelong friendships are often forged during your studies, and it’s perfectly acceptable and normal for students to share accommodation during their studies.
What will work well is to use 2 single beds in the big rooms, and have 1 queen bed in the smallest room if possible.
It’s always a good idea to only deal with 1 main tenant, instead of dealing with each tenant individually, to minimise your involvement and time.
3. Provide essential furniture
Provide essential furniture relevant to a student. Study tables, small wardrobes for every single bed is a good way to add value to your unit and attract tenants.
These furnitures don’t necessarily have to be expensive, as long as it looks good.
4. Partitioning an additional room
If space allows it, you can always partition an additional room to accommodate even more sharing. Your partition walls can also be positioned in a unique way and double as an additional feature wall.
Just remember to partition it and avoid covering natural sunlight. Natural sunlight will always make your unit feel cosier.
5. Keep the ‘moving-in’ costs low
Imagine if you were a tenant looking for a place to stay. When you have chosen a unit to rent, you are expected to pay 3.5 months of rental up front (2.5 months deposit + 1st-month rental).
Now, imagine after paying that, you’ll still have buy a TV, fridge, bed, mattress and a sofa set. That’s a lot of money to spend.
And what happens to the furniture once they finish their studies and return home? Shipping requires more money.
6. Prioritize in-trend cool designs over high-cost built-in furniture
Young people generally value lifestyle and bragging rights over high-cost built-in furniture. Sure, the kitchen is important, but only proceed to do the built-in kitchen after you have covered higher priority items.
As long as the kitchen is practical enough for light cooking and keeping cutlery, it’s good enough for students. What’s more important is that it looks good!
7. Basic electrical appliances
It’s always a good idea to provide electrical appliances as we want to keep moving-in costs low for tenants. Basic models are good enough. There is no need to indulge in complex high-end models. Microwave and induction cooker are good and practical.
8. Get good pictures
Always remember that when tenants look at your ads, the pictures are the deciding factor if anyone calls you to enquire about your unit. Always, always invest in good photography to make your ad stand out against thousands of ads in the property portals.
9. The cool factors
If you have extra budget, it’s a good idea to include some cool factors to better attract tenants to your unit.
Gaming consoles like a PlayStation can invoke emotional appeal and give you extra bargaining power.
Other cool factors are in-trend feature walls with design elements similar to hip cafes these students frequent. All these add bargaining power to the owners.
10. Outsource to professionals
There are service providers out there who can help you strategise, perform a cost effective makeover, and assist you in marketing your unit along with providing professional photography.
What’s more important is that these professionals are property investors first, interior designers second.
Home buyers, sellers or property renters looking for Malaysian Properties, may like to visit the Project Reviews page. Also, read up the other property buying, renting, and investment guides of PropertyGuru!
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