How do you write a lease-transfer listing that works?

A vague listing attracts a lot of people and wastes time. A precise listing attracts fewer people, but the right ones. When you have a few weeks to find a successor, the second one wins.

The information you cannot leave out

• The town and the neighbourhood, without the exact address.
• The number of rooms and the floor area in m².
• The rent excluding charges, and the amount of the charges separately.
• The date of availability.
• The floor, and whether there is a lift.
• The balcony or terrace, the cellar, the parking space or bike space.
• The general condition and the approximate age of the building if you know it.

Separating the rent from the charges is not a detail: the net rent is what candidates are compared against, and it is the figure they will remember.

The exact address is not published

Publishing the street number of an apartment that is still occupied announces publicly that a flat is about to come free and that someone is in the middle of moving out. The town and the neighbourhood are more than enough to locate it.

The address is given to the candidates you keep, when the viewing is arranged. Not before, and not to everyone.

The photographs

• Shoot by day, blinds open, in natural light, not with a flash in the evening.
• Tidy up first: a cluttered apartment looks smaller than it is.
• Show every room, the kitchen and the bathroom included. A missing room makes people uneasy.
• Stand in a corner, at chest height, to convey the volume.
• Do not flatter: over-generous photos are paid for in pointless viewings.
• Avoid showing people, family photos or post.

Filtering before the viewing

Three questions in the listing, or in your first reply, rule out most of the enquiries that will lead nowhere:

1. 1From what date are you looking?
2. 2How many people would live in the apartment?
3. 3Are you able to provide a complete application: income, debt-collection register extract, letter from your employer?

It sounds blunt. It is mostly honest: the candidate knows straight away what is expected, and you do not show the apartment to someone who will not be able to keep up.

The mistakes that scare people off

• Quoting a rent that includes charges without saying so: the candidate feels misled when they read the lease.
• Saying nothing about a visible drawback: an overlooked window, noise, an old kitchen. It will show at the viewing.
• Writing ten lines without a single figure.
• Piling on the superlatives: “exceptional”, “rare”, “a real find” tell nobody anything.
• Forgetting the date of availability, which is often the first thing a candidate sorts by.