Paid for copy and photos on nine turnovers and can't attribute the days saved

14 units, mostly two bed, working class suburb. Last year I ran turnovers with my own phone photos and a description I'd copy forward from the last tenant's listing. Average days vacant across 11 turnovers was 19.

This year I hired out. $180 per unit for a photographer, $65 per unit for written copy from a freelancer who does short rental descriptions. Nine turnovers so far, average days vacant 14. That's five days each, and at $1,150 rent a day is roughly $38, so call it $190 of recovered rent per unit against $245 of spend. Slightly underwater on that math alone.

Except I also raised asking rent $40 across the board in January and still filled faster, which suggests the listings are doing something. And two of the nine were in a building where the neighboring complex started a concession war, so those two took 31 and 27 days and are dragging the average.

Strip those two out and the other seven averaged 9 days. That's ten days better at $38, $380 recovered against $245 spent. Now it looks obviously good, and I don't trust it, because I chose which units to exclude after seeing the numbers.

Decision in front of me: the photographer renews at $210 in March. I'm inclined to keep photos and drop the copy, because I can run my own description through an AI tool for free and I honestly can't tell the freelancer's version from mine. But the freelancer's descriptions do lead with the thing that's actually good about each unit, which mine never did.

2 replies

1priya_n21PO1C

The exclusion problem is real and there's a cheaper way out of it. You have 14 units. Do the next six turnovers alternating, photographer on three, phone on three, same copy source on all six, and don't decide which is which after the fact. It'll take a year to get an answer, which is annoying, and it's the only version you'll believe.

1megan_doyle15 Get yours

Total beginner here so ignore me if this is wrong, but you said the freelancer leads with the good thing about each unit and yours never did. That sounds like the whole $65. Ask her for the list of what she led with on all nine and see if you can write from that pattern yourself. Then you're paying for the thinking once instead of every month.

Paid for copy and photos on nine turnovers and can't attribute the days saved

2 replies