If you’re a landlord looking to rent out your property, you have to consider things such as who you’re renting to, what the unit will look like and how much you’ll be charging.
To get started, you’ll usually have to talk to agents, interior designers and renovators. This process alone would probably take months.
This is the problem The Makeover Guys are trying to tackle.
Instead of getting your property out to the market after months of planning and renovation, The Makeover Guys can do it in just 30 working days.
We talked to the team and they gave us some insight into how they work, even despite the MCO.
Cutting A 3-Month Process Down To 30 Days
The team utilises a renovation technique called Smart Renovation to transform an empty unit into a designer furnished unit with a minimal budget.
“Just for comparison, a conventional ID design project for a residential unit would easily require 3 to 6 months.”
Instead of catering to what the owner wants or prefers aesthetically, the team focuses on rentability. So, their designs are catered towards the tenants.
To meet the owners in the middle, the team curated multiple series of design approaches so as the owner, you can just pick and choose without worrying about colour matching.
But, they don’t just renovate or makeover. Their services include:
- Performing property investment analysis, to understand what to do with your unit
- Property insurance management, to keep your unit insured in case of damages
- Looking for tenants for you, so you don’t have to look for them yourself
- Managing your property, so you can kick back and relax
Maximising Technology In Difficult Times
Usually, businesses like these will require you to meet up with the team, go over to the unit and then work will start from there. But, instead of moving around, all the team needs is some information on your part and they can start work on it.
“Our strategy consultants practice the same process before this, just that in this time of MCO, we want to assist investors by maximising their time at home.”
This meant that the team is well-equipped for the transition to online and that their business will continue unaffected. If you wish to get insight into what you can do with the unit, the team told us that you’ll have to go through these steps:
- Understanding your intent – Is it to rent, sell, or live-in yourself?
- Perform rental analysis – With the information you provide, the team will conduct research of the property, to find out the competition, rental rates versus market rates, and profile the tenants in your unit.
- Plan out your space – Calculate the dimensions of your unit, furniture sizes, and other additional info that’ll boost your unit rentability.
Once those steps are completed, the team will send out a quotation to their customer.
“We practice a 100% transparent quotation process, we list out everything that will be provided in the unit item by item. The budget will vary based on the size of the unit and the market segment of the tenant.”
To cut costs for the customer, the team have also ditched 3D virtual designs because normally it’ll cost thousands to make one design. Instead, the team uses previous 3D virtual designs to showcase their work, eliminating the gap between expectation and reality.
Click here for one of their 3D Virtual Designs.
Right Designs For The Right Tenants
To determine the right tenants for each space they work on, the team goes through extensive research in the area. Over the years, the team has gathered data and conducted research for over 2,600 different properties, so they have a rich database of information to draw from.
As an example, they shared, “Mont Kiara has one of the largest expat populations and they usually come with the families. This group prefers fully furnished units where they can immediately move in.”
The team then said for areas close to tertiary education facilities such as Sunway, the trend is to have units with partitions, catering to the lodging demands of a student.
As for Airbnb hotspots such as units near LRT/MRT stations, they will take a different approach—spatial designs that’ll attract a guest looking at pictures online.
When it comes to competitive pricing, the team told us that units above RM3,000 should be equipped with spaces that are more avant-garde and mature, as those are the target market.
However, for units around the RM1,200 mark, tenants will simply expect the units to be equipped with the necessities such as water heater, air-conditioning and the like.
So, What’s Next?
Because of the MCO, they will only be able to start their remodelling/redesigning process after the MCO lifts. The benefit is, they’ll be able to start work right away because the team will have planned everything beforehand.
If you wish, you also don’t have to opt-in for all of their services. You can simply pick and choose after the makeover process.
Opting for The Makeover Guys’ full-service package takes the responsibility off your hands, and your role is to wait for the rent money for your investment. The other benefit is that you can do all of this from the comfort of your home, without heading out to your unit and breaking MCO.
- More info on The Makeover Guys’ online consultation here.
- Find out more about The Makeover Guys here.
Featured Image Credit: The Makeover Guys