The Success Story of Walid’s Rent Rooms, Hit Full Occupancy in 5 Months – Renting a room to live, that is usually called “Kos”, is not an unusual thing for an Indonesian architect Walid Guntur Cahyadi. Similar to many individuals in the country, who need to work or study in another city that is located so far from their hometown, he also rented a Kos room in his youth.

His parents, who live in Jogja – that is usually called “Student City” because it has so many universities – also provide rooms that can be rented by students from other cities.

That’s why, when Walid has succeeded in his career as an architect and looking for opportunities to get additional income, the idea of building a house with many rooms that can be rented suddenly comes to his mind. With so little knowledge about the business, he just went with the idea and started the construction amid the pandemic.

The rental rooms were ready five months ago, when the pandemic was getting better, and the government started to lift social restrictions. However, Walid is aware that it’s just the beginning of his entrepreneurial life.

He remembers that his parents manage every aspect of their rental rooms by themselves. It gave them headaches and made them so tired with all of the trouble related to the building and its residents. 

Thus, Walid doesn’t want to follow that path. He prefers to focus on things that he can handle, and let other people help him with the rest. It led him to find Singgahsini service from Mamikos, and partnered with them since August this year.

Surprisingly, Walid’s rental rooms have been fully occupied today. 

How was Walid, despite a lack of understanding of the business idea, able to achieve the milestone in a short time after getting help from Singgahsini?

Marketing Boost

Many rental room owners in Indonesia still rely on conventional marketing by putting a physical banner in front of the building, a method that has limitations in coverage. On the other side, digital marketing through the marketplace and social media need expensive investment that many landlords are not able to afford.

This is where Singgahsini can help him, by providing a more efficient way in marketing and managing the Kos rooms. 

As part of Mamikos, Singgahsini can maximize the quality of Walid’s rental rooms listing in Mamikos’ marketplace. Information about the rooms will also appear in all Mamikos’ marketing channels, so the exposure will be optimal. On top of that, Singgahsini also provides professional photographers to take high quality photos, video, and 360 virtual tours.

Walid’s rental rooms succeeded to gain a huge interest and were able to reach full occupancy in just 5 months after the opening. The performance itself is not an anomaly, as Singgahsini has a reputation of helping some landlords who have properties in South Jakarta to also hit 100% occupancy in a similar time span.

Complaint Handling

Another important thing that may affect the popularity of a rent room is the landlord’s ability to manage complaints and negative reviews. Some complaints that were left unaddressed may result in a bad impression on a Kos room.

However, responding well to all complaints is not an easy task, as it needs exhausting effort to regularly check incoming messages and thorough investigation to understand the root cause of the complaints.

Singgahsini service can also give support in this aspect by managing all incoming inquiry, survey scheduling, and booking process for new tenants. On the other side, it can also handle complaints from existing renters, and prevent further discomfort by assisting landlords in prioritizing complaints, validating necessary renovation, and finding contractors to execute the repair.

Cash Flow Management

The surge of occupancy rate is concurrent with the additional income for landlords. However, it is not the case if they fail to collect the monthly payment on time.

Singgahsini, on the other hand, can ensure on time payment from tenants by sending digital invoices to them every month. It also provides various digital payment methods, so renters can choose any method that they are comfortable with, that will result in better cash flow for the landlords.

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This is Walid’s journey, who is able to go from a newbie landlord to become a master rent rooms owner with full occupancy in his property. It proves that with a good construction, comfy design, and proper support system that can help in promoting and managing the Kos rooms, any property owner can also follow the path.

The post The Success Story of Walid’s Rent Rooms, Hit Full Occupancy in 5 Months appeared first on Blog Mamikos.

How To Use Digital Marketing To Become A Successful Property Landlord – Due to the rising price of property in the country, a huge amount of Indonesians prefer to rent instead of buying a living place. It resulted in the surge of room rental business, or what local people usually called as “Kos”.

There is a difference between Kos and the rental concept that is common in the US, where landlords usually lease a whole house or apartment. In Indonesia, landlords choose to divide their property into several rooms that are separated from each other, so people can rent them at a cheaper price.

The concept is quite similar with coliving, but the renters don’t really need to work or play together with other occupants. They may meet each other when entering or leaving the property, but most of the time they can just stay in their own room.

It’s hard to count the total Kos room in Indonesia, because many of them aren’t explicitly visible as room rentals. However, their total number can reach millions across the country. Their main target are young single workers, newlywed couples, or students who want to live near their campus. That’s why you can find many Kos rooms in big cities or districts with many universities.

However, despite the huge potential, almost all aspects of the Kos business is still traditional, especially in how landlords market their properties. Many of them still rely on physical banners that they put in front of the property to attract renters. It resulted in a very limited coverage, and restricted ways to promote positive things about the room.

The condition is worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic that was spread in the country, pushing the government to limit people’s movement in public places.

Fortunately, we are living in a technology era, so everything can be easier by the means of digital tools. Despite restrictions to go outside, we can still connect with our relatives and friends through chat apps. That’s why the traditional way of offering properties can also be substituted with promoting the room on the internet through digital marketing.

Why has digital marketing become so critical?

The main importance of digital marketing for the Kos landlords is to close the information gap with the potential renters. 

For example, there are some people who have to relocate to other cities due to business matters or education purposes. They won’t understand the new area well, and may overlook properties that only promote themselves through physical banners. It then becomes a missed opportunity for the landlords.

Digital marketing can help close that gap by informing users about the availability of Kos rooms around the area where they want to live. Potential renters only need to browse the internet to find the rooms, get more information, and select the best room for them.

Another crucial aspect of digital marketing is how it can help the landlords to show the unique strength of their rooms compared to the competitors in the same area.

Traditional banners usually only showed limited information, such as price and availability. You need to visit and check it one by one to compare a room with another. In times of pandemic, it is not only a time wasting and tiring effort, but is also a potential health threat.

Digital marketing can help the landlords in showing their strength, such as price, cleanliness, coziness, and distance to the closest train station. Thus, potential renters can compare rooms without directly visiting the property beforehand.

5 tips in promoting rental rooms through digital marketing

While digital marketing has such a benefit compared to traditional advertising, landlords can only reap it if they understand how to use it correctly. These are tips for promoting your Kos rooms properly on the internet.

1.Information and photo are critical

The first thing that you should do to market your properties in online space is by providing the information about the rooms. You have to describe the details as complete as possible, from the address of the property, rooms’ price, upfront payment if necessary, to rules that must be obeyed.

However, a written description is not enough. It’s better if you can provide attractive photos or videos of the room and its surroundings, so potential renters can be lured to live in the place.

You can put all of that information and material in a dedicated website, social media, or through rental room marketplaces, such as Mamikos. Don’t forget to put your location in Google Maps, plus your contact number so people who are interested in the rooms can call you directly.

2. Review is a double-edge knife 

The beauty of providing the details of your rental rooms on the internet is that everyone can give a review to your property. However, you have to be careful with it, because not all of them are good reviews.

So, after you publish information about the rooms, you have to properly manage every review and complaint that comes. If you receive a negative comment, it’s better to investigate the cause and come up with the proper solution first, before addressing it.

3. Determine the right target audience

While you can only reach a limited audience through traditional advertising, digital marketing allows you to promote your properties to a targeted and wider audience.

For example, if your property is located in Kebayoran Baru, Jakarta, you can set your property advertisement to be seen only by people who already live in the area. You can also set to only show your property promotion to people whose office is located in the area, or people who are showing an interest to relocate to your area.

4. Be creative

Traditional advertising is not only limited by coverage, but also in how you can show your message. It usually can only contain text and photos, which seems boring for most people.

Digital marketing allows you to be wildly creative. You can promote your rental rooms via text, picture, long video in YouTube, or short video in TikTok. You can also focus the message on the beauty of the room, the cozy atmosphere of the building, or the close relationship among the inhabitants.

However, you have to be careful to not post any content that can make some people angry or offended, and discourage them from renting your Kos rooms.

5. Find a good partner

Everything that I mentioned above may be too sophisticated and complex for you, who only want to focus on maintaining the cleanliness and comfort of your property. That’s why you can also bring in a partner that can give you all of those positive things of digital marketing, without much hassle.

For example, Singgahsini from Mamikos, that can help you to be prioritized when people are looking for a room to rent in Mamikos platform, handle complaints from customers, and help you to provide marketing assets, such as photos and videos. It can also help you in determining a good branding strategy for your property, so it can stand out compared to competitors.

The combination of knowledge in digital marketing and thoroughness in keeping the good shape of your property, is key to thrive in the Indonesian Kos room market. With a productive population that keeps increasing, the property for Indonesian people is a market that will be so hard to resist.

The post How To Use Digital Marketing To Become A Successful Property Landlord appeared first on Blog Mamikos.

How Pandemic Impacting Indonesia Kos Industry – Before the pandemic, finding a kos (Shared Housing) has become one of the most essential items on the to-do list when relocating to a different city in Indonesia. For decades, kos has been a part of young professionals and university students as they relocate to larger cities in pursuit of a higher education/starting their career. 

As larger cities mean larger opportunities to start their career, Jakarta (the capital city of Indonesia) has an influx of migrants from various cities in Indonesia. Due to the population influx and the continuous hike of property prices, rentals of kos have been an alternative for migrant workers and students who want closer proximity to its daily activities. In fact a survey done by Indonesia Property Watch states that 47.4% of Millennials in Indonesia would select kos as a housing alternative compared to living in an apartment or staying at their family house.  

Being an integral part of Indonesian young adults, kos has created its own ecosystem and a business opportunity for entrepreneurs. By renting out available rooms at their home, owners are able to receive a stable passive income and as the prospect of the industry grows, more individuals start to build dedicated kos buildings that are in close proximity to strategic locations such as universities, city centers and Central Business Districts.  

Tech entrepreneurs in Indonesia have realized the potential of the kos ecosystem which accounts for the number of various startups digitizing the country’s kos ecosystem in the past couple of years. From digital bookkeeping, online payments, property management software, listing platforms and managed properties various startups enter the market with different digital products. 

Mamikos started as a marketing listing platform, it has expanded to various services such as property management, digital bookkeeping and management software for owners. Currently, it serves 150,000 kos owners and 6 million users who are in search of their right kos, which makes it the leading software for the kos industry.  

However, as Covid-19 pandemic spread like a wildfire across the world, the kos industry has been impacted negatively. Even though the kos industry has become an integral part of young adults in Indonesia and was predicted to grow in the coming years, the spread of Covid-19 made renting a kos no longer deemed necessary for the majority of young adults. With new government regulations, people no longer have the need to be close to city centers or business districts. As most offices shifted to remote work, universities shifted to online learning, workers and students tend to go back to their hometown. This immensely disrupted the kos industry causing smaller startups to close down their operations. 

Mamikos itself has experienced a hit during the pandemic. Drop in traffic from prospective tenants and the drop in occupancy have also affected the kos owners that the company serves. As conditions improve, a recent trend of “work-from-Bali” has also shown how in the foreseeable future, local and affordable stays for longer periods may replace the need for long term rent at large metropolitan centres as more individuals prefer to be mobile. According to Brian Chesky (CEO of Airbnb), the demand for domestic accommodation has more than doubled on their platform, to over 80%. Almost 60% of customers now book properties up to 300 km from home, compared to only 33% in the pre-Covid-19 period. 

The Covid-19 pandemic has been described as the biggest crisis. In a matter of months, our world has been transformed in ways that we could have not imagined. As the pandemic is far from over and recovery of the kos industry is still uncertain. Given the increasing importance of the health-and-safety standards, we are likely to expect tighter control from the platform over its users on both the supplier and the consumer sides. As kos owners and individuals may also have their own restrictions and requirements, moving to a kos may not be as easy as it used to be. Platforms and its kos owners may have to adjust on their approach to accommodate a high demand for affordability and cleanliness. Also in a new era of remote and hybrid work/school models, the return of renting a room at a kos for a long period will likely be a personal decision for many individuals as they weigh the need to be close to city centers and universities. 

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