PadSplit’s award-winning co-living model aligns incentives for property owners, cities, businesses, and our workforce. By converting underutilized spaces such as dining rooms and offices into additional bedrooms and renting by the room, property owners create more much-needed adorable housing for our workforce and often see NOI increase by more than 2X.
We believe it’s possible to do good and do well, and PadSplit’s marketplace makes it easy to optimize and list your home to receive bookings.
How Does PadSplit Promote Listings?
PadSplit’s marketplace makes it easy for property owners to onboard and list their homes, and once a property is live, PadSplit goes to great lengths to promote your property to approved and prospective residents.
PadSplit solicits Members looking for rooms through digital marketing channels, integrations with 20+ listing aggregator sites, and high-targeted outbound marketing efforts leveraging AI-based algorithms. PadSplit’s in-house marketing team — yes, they’re real humans! — are available by phone and live chat to walk prospects through the application, booking, and move-in process.
During onboarding, PadSplit Hosts can list their properties as “Coming Soon” on the marketplace allowing Members to sign up for email and text notifications when the property goes live.
Why Are Bookings Important?
PadSplit Hosts generate revenue when their rooms are occupied. Faster bookings and longer tenures mean more revenue for you as a property owner. Increasing occupancy breaks down into two parts:
- Increasing move-ins
- Reducing move-outs by keeping Members happy.
Let’s look at how to improve bookings and reduce move-out to understand how to increase your revenue.
8 Ways to Improve Occupancy and Increase PadSplit Bookings
Review your property listing
Ask yourself what makes your PadSplit unique. Is it near a public transport stop? Is it close to a job center? Does it have a large and beautiful kitchen? Lockable bedroom doors? Now take a look at your property title and description. Does it highlight these features? If not, you may be missing out on bookings. If you need some ideas, ask your current Members what attracted them to booking your PadSplit. Listen to their feedback and adjust your listing accordingly.
In addition to highlighting the property features, it’s essential to verify the listing information. Have you filled out the room size for your bedrooms? Is the room information, such as bed size and storage options, accurate? Review every aspect of your listing in detail and fill in any missed information.
Update your listing photos
The most compelling feature of any listing on our site is photography. Our Members love seeing multiple aspects of the property, including common spaces, kitchen, bathrooms, various photos of bedrooms, and the storage options in each bedroom. Members aren’t viewing properties in person before move-in day, so your images are critical.
Before scheduling your photos, review our PadSplit listing best practices. We recommend 10-15 photos per listing. If you’re unsure about the quality of your photos, consider sharing your property listing with friends and family and asking for their honest feedback. If you decide it’s time to update your photos, browse PadSplit’s Vendor Network to find the perfect photographer for your PadSplit.
Adjust your pricing
One of our Members’ top searches when finding a room is price, so it’s an important factor in occupancy. When setting your pricing, be sure to use PadSplit’s pricing recommendation tool and browse other active listings on PadSplit to gauge pricing.
Our pricing recommendation tool is a guide, so feel free to have pricing lower than our initial recommendation. A good rule of thumb is to start pricing a bit higher and then slowly reduce prices over time if your expected occupancy has not been achieved. We highlight price reductions over $10 of the cheapest room in a property with a green “price reduction” label.
Reduce your move-in fee
If you’re not ready to adjust your room pricing, consider adjusting your move-in fee. Hosts set the move-in fee for each new move-in when onboarding a property. This one-time fee paid by the Member covers the cost of cleaning and readying the room for move-in.
Reducing your move-in fee or even removing it entirely can help increase your bookings. PadSplit highlights properties without a move-in fee with a “no move-in fee” label in the room search. Members in certain areas can also filter by the “No Move-in fee” label. If you aren’t ready to drop your move-in fee altogether, consider reducing it by $25.
Consider adding additional property or room amenities
A great way to increase bookings is to differentiate your property from nearby PadSplits with additional features or amenities. Here are a few property and room amenities we’ve seen Hosts add to increase bookings:
- In-room workspaces: Consider adding a desk and chair to bedrooms to allow Members to work from home or make it easy for students to continue their coursework.
- Two-way locks: When choosing your bedroom locks, consider many factors, including cost and Member experience. Two-way locks are appealing to Members looking for an added element of privacy. Some Members are concerned about leaving their belongings in a room that doesn’t look from the outside. If you update your room locks, update your property move-in instructions and codes.
- Monthly cleaning service: Cleanliness is important to PadSplit Members and can significantly drive Member tenure. We’ve seen some Hosts schedule a monthly cleaning service to visit their PadSplits and clean the common areas such as kitchens and bathrooms. Factoring this cost into your room price the same way you do utilities may increase bookings and improve long-term Member satisfaction.
Whatever additional room or property amenities you decide to add, update your photography and property description to reflect the new additions.
Promote your listing outside of PadSplit
PadSplit goes to great lengths to promote your property listing to prospective and approved Members, and we’ve seen some PadSplit Hosts take it one step further with guerilla marketing efforts.
Consider listing your property in different places such as Craigslist or Facebook marketplace. You can also join localized Facebook groups for community members looking for housing and share your property information.
Print flyers with your property information and a QR code and post them around the neighborhood, nearby job centers, or transit hubs. To print a property flyer, go to your dashboard, click on the properties tab, select one property of your property list, then go to the Promotion tab, and you will be able to generate your property customized flyer!
Incentivize current Members to tell a friend
Did you know PadSplit offers a “Give $50, Get $50” referral program for Active Members? When a current PadSplit Member refers a friend to PadSplit through their Member dashboard, we give each of them a $50 credit in their account – at no cost to the Host. The best part? There’s no limit to how many referrals a Member can send.
When communicating with your current residents, remind them of PadSplit’s referral program and encourage them to invite a friend to move into a vacant room in the property. We’ve also seen PadSplit Hosts offer additional incentives, such as Amazon gift cards or AirPods, to current residents for recruiting friends to move into open rooms.
How to Make Move-Ins As Smooth as Possible
Improving your occupancy doesn’t just stop at bookings. We encourage PadSplit Hosts to make move-ins as seamless as possible. There are so many ways to ensure your move-ins are as easy as possible, you can read about them here, but here are three of the most important things to consider when preparing for move-ins from new Members:
Cleanliness
Evidence indicates that lack of cleanliness is one of the main reasons for poor move-in experiences, leading to early move-outs. The lack of cleanliness affects move-ins, and as the atmosphere of the house degrades, the house requires more maintenance, and the relationship between the Members deteriorates. A Member moving into a dirty room or property doesn’t instill confidence in their long-term experience.
If you or your property manager are able, visit the property ahead of scheduled move-ins to ensure cleanliness or send a notification to current Members to encourage them to clean the common areas. You can also read about more ways to encourage cleanliness here.
Responsiveness
Maintenance, Member response rate, and move-in experience affect Member satisfaction. When Members are happy, they stay longer!
PadSplit provides a maintenance ticketing service that allows Members to submit maintenance tickets directly to Hosts. Addressing issues in the home leads to longer tenure because Members know their concerns will be addressed. Check out our recommended guidelines for maintenance response times.
Ongoing quality assurance inspections
We suggest all PadSplit Hosts or property managers conduct bi-weekly quality assurance walkthroughs to ensure the PadSplit is in good working order for current and future Members. Pair these walkthroughs with an in-person visit to deal with a specific maintenance issue. You can address current issues in the house with Members before they become more significant and more costly issues in the future. Besides, it’s a perfect moment to talk to your Members and receive their feedback.
Final Thoughts
As a PadSplit Host, the faster your rooms are booked and the longer they are occupied means two things: affordable and accessible housing for your community members and more revenue for you as a property owner.
PadSplit will continue to drive traffic to property listings through our marketplace and ongoing marketing efforts, but if you’d like to see faster bookings, consider making a few of these changes to drive occupancy.
