Occasionally an owner will think their 45 year old house should rent for the same price as a newer place, without regard for how ‘dated’ their place can be. I had that situation occur this past month with my brother’s rental property.
His place has smaller ‘standard’ closets and smaller sized 2nd and 3rd bedrooms, which aren’t very popular in our market. He wanted $2200/month because he was sure that’s what all the other places would rent for. I felt it would rent quickly for $1950. So we put it on the market to see what happened.
I shot this video tour of his place which now has 200+ views from our website listing.
Here’s a screen shot of the Audience Retention Rate for the video
It takes a nose dive when I enter those bedrooms. The audience retention actually rate drops from 80% to 40% in that 2nd bedroom.
I sent this screenshot to him to show him that half the showings got turned off there and abandoned viewing his video tour, and that’s why we needed to adjust the price. We adjusted and it rented quickly for $1975!
You don’t always have to ask for a price reduction.
This can also be used to ask the property owner for funds needed for updates or improvements – whether it’s new flooring, getting rid of the shiny wallpaper in the kitchen, or even updating the entire kitchen. A few years ago, we were trying to rent a 35 year old townhome near the beach with an original kitchen. All of the other units in the community had renovated kitchens, and rented quickly but this unit always took forever to rent.
One day I sent a photo of the YouTube audience retention rate showing a huge drop off rate as the kitchen was shown. The result? The owner sent $17,500 to renovate the kitchen. We’d been asking him to do this for years, but apparently all it took was a YouTube stat to make him act!
Video Tour Training – FREE
Cost to edit video tour – $20
Video Camera for my iPhone – $400
Proving my opinion of value to a client?
Priceless 馃檪
To see the video retention rate for your tours, here are the steps you take:
- Log into your YouTube Channel and select a video
- Click the ‘Analytics’ button under the video
- Select ‘Audience Retention’ from the left margin
- The default period you’ll see is ‘Last 28 Days’. Be sure to Select ‘Lifetime’ from the drop menu at the top right
- Look at the line graph for any sharp drops, and drag/scroll the video playback button to that sharp drop.
Drops like these are when people stopped viewing your video, and it could either be because something about the property is undesirable, or your video skills need help lol! 馃檪
FREE How to Shoot a Video tour Training!
If you need help, check out our free training on How to Shoot a Video tour HERE on our site. Better yet – sign up for our Video Mastery Program, and we guarantee you and your team will soon be shooting video tours like this one I shot of my brother’s rental home!