Preparing your property to let — what gets it let faster

Neutral palettes let. They photograph well, they hide a tenant's furniture better, and they leave the maximum number of prospective tenants able to picture themselves in the room. A property repainted in a warm off-white will outlet the same property in feature colours by a week and a half, in our experience. A professional repaint of a two-bed flat — walls and ceilings, no woodwork — runs £500–£900 in Worthing and Brighton. A full repaint with woodwork and skirting is closer to £1,200–£1,800. Either pays for itself within six to twelve weeks of avoided void on a mid-market property. DIY only if you're properly equipped and the property is straightforward. A patchy repaint photographs worse than the original tired paint did, and prospective tenants notice. The cost differential between competent DIY and a professional decorator is rarely more than £400 — and the time saving is often three or four weekends.

Most of the lettings market in Worthing and Brighton is unfurnished. The professional sharers, families, and longer-stay couples that make up the bulk of demand prefer to bring their own furniture — and an unfurnished property opens the tenant pool by a meaningful margin. Furnished works well for small studios and one-beds in central BN1 and BN2, where the typical tenant is a younger professional or a postgraduate; properties marketed to corporate or relocation tenants; and HMOs. The middle ground — part-furnished with a sofa, bed, white goods, and dining table — closes some of the demand gap without the cost or ongoing replacement of full furnishing. Most landlords moving from an own-occupation property to a let stay part-furnished by leaving in whatever was already there and writing it into the inventory. Tax note: from April 2016 the wear-and-tear allowance was replaced by the Replacement of Domestic Items relief — you can deduct the cost of like-for-like replacements (sofa, bed, white goods) but not the initial purchase. Worth knowing if you're deciding whether to furnish.

There are three buckets of work to think about before marketing, and the bar for each is different. The first is the non-negotiable safety and habitability work. The boiler should have been serviced. Anything flagged on the EICR has to be remedied. Smoke and CO alarms working, tested, recorded. Window restrictors on any upper-floor sash windows. Heating, hot water, secure locks, working sockets in every room. Anything in this bucket is a regulatory matter, not a marketing one, and there's no version of "the rent won't justify it" that applies — these are the conditions under which you're allowed to let the property at all. Visible damp or mould falls in here too: under the Renters' Rights Act, hazards have prescribed remediation timescales after notification, and a tenant moving into visible damp is a complaint waiting to be filed. The second bucket is the work that's worth doing for marketability. Tired carpets, especially in living areas — a £600 mid-grade neutral carpet usually returns its cost in the rent achievable within a year. Broken bathroom or kitchen items: taps, splashbacks, missing tiles. The first photo on the listing is the front of the property, so a clean front door, a tidy front garden or window box, even a freshly-washed path, all sit in this bucket too. The third bucket is the work that probably isn't worth doing. Cosmetic blemishes that fit the property's price point. A £900-pcm flat doesn't need new kitchen handles; a £2,200-pcm townhouse arguably does. Anything ornamental that a tenant would replace within a month of moving in. The rule of thumb that holds up across most properties is to spend a pound to make three pounds in achievable rent over the next two years. Anything that doesn't clear that bar is usually deferrable.

The single biggest determinant of how quickly a property lets is the photography. Properties with professional photos receive measurably more enquiries, in the same week, at the same price, in the same area, than properties with phone photos. The cost of getting the photos right is the lowest-cost-highest-return lever a landlord has. What good lettings photography is: a wide-angle lens, taken from corners to show the room's full footprint; natural light, mid-morning or mid-afternoon — never in flat midday glare or after dark; decluttered, with worktops cleared, beds made, bins out of shot, personal photos down. We take the photos ourselves on every let. It takes a couple of hours on site, and we send the gallery for your sign-off before anything goes live. Photos that work in autumn light don't always work in spring light — we redo them if the season changes between marketing rounds.

Every listing should answer three questions in the first two lines: what is it, where is it, and who will love it. "A bright two-bedroom Victorian terrace in central Tarring, ideal for a couple or small family who want a garden without leaving Worthing town." A first sentence like that — clear, specific, addressed to a tenant profile — outperforms a paragraph of agent-speak. After the hook, work room by room: living room, kitchen, principal bedroom, second bedroom, bathroom, outside space. Keep each room to one or two sentences. Mention measurable benefits (south-facing garden, double-glazed sash windows, en-suite to principal) rather than adjectives ("spacious", "stunning", "modern"). Close with the local context: walk to station, schools in catchment, nearest high street. This is where the tenant pictures the life — and it's the line that gets bookmarked. We write the copy on every let we run, and we redraft it for the second round of marketing if the first round hasn't produced offers within ten days. The listing is a tool, not a fixed document.