Neighbourhood Watch: Better amenities will attract higher rents

With large amounts of potential property coming to the market, landlords are interested in knowing what they can do to preempt the arrival of these products. It is easy to simply lower the rents and with the already existing properties, this may be the sensible solution.

However with those properties still on the drawing board, it may be worth investors learning what can be given to tenants to guarantee the maximum return on the investment. Investors must have a clear understanding of the factors that are most important to tenants and also the features for which tenants will pay extra rent.

Better understanding of occupiers will enable investors to achieve anticipated returns.

So what will entice a tenant to pay more rent? Would a pool, a view, a garden, a larger living room, more bedrooms, better location, or quality finishes be among the features that will contribute to maximum rental rates?

While all of these are important features for a potential tenant to consider, one does have to be cognizant of the budget depths. The tenant often has only so many dirhams to spend on rent and the investor has only so much to spend on construction.

Greater attention to design would help provide the required amenities that will attract higher rents and increased occupancy, while not increasing the overall investment.

We hear landlords justifying their desired rents by virtue of the fact that they have a larger property to offer. They are often perplexed when a competitor is receiving a higher rent for his 4-bed room villa when his 5-bedroom property is achieving considerably less.

His villa may be larger, but offers virtually no storage areas along with plenty of wasted unusable space. Attention to design at the initial stage could have been advantageous to the investor in the long run.

In a dynamic economy, young people form a major component of the community and likely a greater proportion of the tenant mix. These young people generally have children, and therefore need room for toys and many of the other items required when raising a family.

Dead space simply generates higher Dewa bills with no offer of practical usage. We see hundreds of houses with the only real storage areas being the wardrobes.

Unfortunately these are required for daily usage and are not storage facilities. Bicycles, large toys, high chairs and suitcases are standard items requiring storage space but often totally overlooked while small toys, linens, games, vacuum cleaners are given much the same inattention.

We continue to see a lack of storage in bathrooms while the guest bathroom provides excess space along with unnecessary sanitary ware and plumbing.

Eliminating some of these redundant extras would provide the resources needed for design fees and thus provide for the possible reduction of this common problem.

Understanding the true tenant needs goes to the heart of the investment and is central to the landlord being able to evaluate the true potential rent, rather than judging this on the gross number of rooms.

Every property owner, large or small cannot afford to overlook this issue as the market continues to change.