Lettings Case Study: Six New Landlords in Sixty Days.
One offer. Three channels. Six landlords added to the portfolio.
Sales fees are a firework. They’re satisfying, they’re large, and then they’re gone and you start again.
A managed landlord is different. They pay every month, for years, whether or not the sales market is doing anything. Six of them is not “six leads” – it’s six recurring revenue lines added to a business in two months, and a materially more valuable company at the end of it.
This is how we did it.
The Situation.
An estate agent with a strong sales operation and a lettings book he wanted to grow properly.
The problem with growing a lettings book is that nobody wakes up wanting to switch agents. A landlord with a tenant in place and rent arriving has no reason to move – even if their current agent is mediocre, even if they’re being overcharged. Switching means paperwork, risk and effort to solve a problem they’ve learned to live with.
You cannot out-argue that inertia. You have to make moving now worth more than staying put.
What We Did.
- We built an offer with a deadline attached.
Any landlord who partnered with him in the next 60 days got their first three months of management free.
Two things are doing the work here, and both matter.
The free months remove the friction. Switching has a real cost in hassle, so we paid for that hassle up front. It reframes the decision from “is he better than my current agent?” – unanswerable – to “is three months free worth an afternoon of admin?” Much easier.
The deadline creates the reason to act today. An open-ended offer is a nice thing a landlord means to look into and never does. Sixty days forces the decision into the present, which is the only place decisions happen.
2. We produced content that proved his expertise.
Before asking anyone to move their property, we spent the window demonstrating why he was worth moving to: how he manages compliance, how he handles arrears and difficult tenancies, what his void periods look like, how he prices to let quickly without underselling.
Landlords are commercial. They’re not choosing on charm – they’re choosing on whether this agent will protect their asset and their yield. So we showed them, in specifics.
3. We used his own audience, not just paid reach.
His social channels and his email list carried the offer alongside the advertising – and if I were sequencing this from scratch, I’d always lead with them. It’s the order most agents get wrong.
The people who already follow him and are already on his list are the warmest landlords available. Some of them own rental property he doesn’t manage. Some know someone who does. Reaching them costs nothing and converts best – so exhaust the free audience before you pay for a cold one.
4. We amplified with Meta Ads.
A lead generation campaign put the offer in front of landlords he had no existing relationship with – the cold audience the warm channels can’t reach.
Running both together is what makes 60 days enough. The warm audience converts fastest; the paid campaign supplies the volume the warm audience runs out of.
The Results.
Six new managed landlords signed inside the 60-day window, off the back of one offer – three months’ management free – carried across three channels: his own social audience, his email list, and a Meta Ads lead campaign.
Six landlords does not sound like much. Look at what it actually is.
Why Six Landlords Is a Bigger Result Than It Sounds
It’s recurring, not one-off. Six landlords paying monthly management is annual revenue that arrives without being re-won. Next year they’re still there. The sales fee you closed last month isn’t.
Three months free is a rounding error against the lifetime. Landlords stay with a good managing agent for years. Giving up the first quarter to win a multi-year relationship isn’t a discount – it’s a customer acquisition cost, and a cheap one. The mistake would be protecting three months of fees and never getting the landlord at all.
It’s counter-cyclical. When the sales market slows, lettings holds. Every landlord added is insulation against the next quiet quarter – which is precisely why the valuation of a hybrid agency leans so heavily on the size of the lettings book.
And it compounds sideways. A managed landlord is a future sales instruction, a source of tenant relationships that become buyers, and the most credible referrer you can have to other landlords, who tend to know each other.
The Takeaway For Agents
Landlords don’t switch because you’re better. They switch because switching becomes, briefly, obviously worth doing.
Build a real offer, put a real deadline on it, prove you know what you’re doing, and take it to your own audience before you pay to reach strangers. Sixty days is enough.
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