Property Management
2 min read
You’ll often get a rental appraisal when you buy an investment property.
That appraisal tells you how much rent the property might get. And you use that number to figure out if the property stacks up financially.
But here’s a question I get all the time as a property manager: “Tom, when you say my property will rent for $600 a week … how accurate is that really?”
If you tell me a property will rent for $600 - $620 a week … does that really happen?
At Opes Property Management, we believe that property investors deserve straight answers.
But, to the best of our knowledge, no other property managers track or lease this data publicly.
That’s why in this article, we want to be the first to do just that. So you’ll see our actual data. That includes what we said a property would rent for vs what it actually rented for.
That way you will know whether our rental appraisals are accurate (or not).
That's why we show you how we are performing, both when the data is good ... and when we’ve got work to do.
Here is the live data about whether we are meeting our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) or not.
🟢 means meeting target. 🟠 means we are close. 🔴 means we've got work to do.
We have 2 property management teams at Opes Property Management – Auckland and Christchurch.
Over the last 5 weeks, my team in Christchurch has rented out 55 properties (at the time of writing).
I went back and compared the rental appraisal we initially gave investors ... to the actual rent those properties achieved once tenants moved in.
So if we said that a property would rent for $550 - $570. Did it rent within that range? Or was it higher? Was it lower?
Here’s what we found:
Of those 55 properties, 2 rented higher than the appraised range (4%). 3 rented below the appraised range (5%).
That gives me a lot of confidence that our rental appraisals are accurate. It means 95% of our landlords are getting the appraised range (or higher).
If we just look at the properties we rented over the last 4 weeks (ending 3rd November). If we gave a rental appraisal of $550–$570 per week, the average property would have rented for $557 per week. That's within the appraised range.
Over those 4 weeks, our Christchurch team rented properties. 2 rented below the appraised range.
Now let's look at the data from our Auckland team.
If we just look at the properties we rented over the last 4 weeks (ending 3rd November). If we gave a rental appraisal of $620–$640 per week, the average property would have rented for $0 per week. That's $620 under the lower bound of the rental appraisal.
Over those 4 weeks, our Auckland team rented 22 properties. 9 rented within the rental range we appraised. 13 rented below the appraised range.
Keep in mind that Opes Property Management is a little different to other companies.
Most of the rental properties we appraise are New Builds. So we give a rental appraisal. Then the property gets built. And we often don’t rent the property for another 12 – 18 months.
Over that year or so, the market can change. Rents could go up. They could go down.
Compare that to most property management companies. They will give a rental appraisal and rent the properties around 4 weeks later. So it’s the same market.
However, we track these numbers out anyway. Because if we told you that your property would rent for $620 - $640 a week, it doesn't matter that the market has changed. You probably still want that amount of rent.
We’re not doing this to pat ourselves on the back. Or to beat ourselves up.
Here at Opes, we want to be the most transparent property management business. So we release our internal data to show where we are strong (and also what we’re working on).
That’s why we also release our vacancy rates.
If you’re trusting us to manage your property, you should know whether we set the right expectations. And if we’re delivering on them.
That’s why we release this data. That’s our commitment to you.
Business Development Manager with 5 years Property Management industry experience. Property Investor in Christchurch
Tom Greene is the Business Development Manager at Opes Property Management in Christchurch with over five years of industry experience and is also an experienced property investor. Tom provides tenancy guidance and insight to those both starting and continuing their investment journey.
