I once came across a prospective tenant who was in desperate
need of accommodation in Enugu. When he approached me as a realtor, I was more than happy to help him find his
dream home. He explained to me that he had just been recently promoted at work,
was on transfer in Enugu and was currently staying in a hotel at the expense of
the company he worked for. It turned out that he had limited time to stay in
the hotel and had to check out within a week or his company will stop paying
the hotel bills which will compel him to either get thrown out of the hotel or
pay for his stay in the hotel out of his own pocket. Long story short, we had only a one
week deadline to find him an alternative accommodation.
I questioned him further and realized that he operated on an
open listing basis (we will discuss types of listing agreements in another
post). In other words, I wasn’t the only realtor he had consulted on this
issue, on the contrary, he had been shown a couple of houses by other agents
but was yet to decide on the one to rent. Why is that? I wondered. I eventually
realized that the problem here wasn’t that he hadn’t seen properties that met
his preferences but that he had seen so many and was left confused. By the
time he eventually arrived at a decision, it was
too late because some other prospective tenant had paid for the house he
selected due to the fact that he was to slow to the go.
In the light of that realization, it was clear to me what I had
to do to help out. The solution here was to help him quickly make a choice. So I
introduced him to a system that I often use to help my clients reach a decision
quickly based on my understanding of social exchange theory. This solution is
called the additive model to decision making. Around here we call it "the decision
sheet".
Here’s how it works.
Step 1:
Draw a table listing all the attributes you desire in a
property. Draw the table to include the number of homes you have seen so far. If
you do it right, it should look something like this.
|
S/N
|
Attributes
|
Home A
|
Home B
|
Home C
|
|
1
|
rent
|
|
|
|
|
2
|
distance to work
|
|
|
|
|
3
|
finishing
|
|
|
|
|
4
|
TOTAL
|
|
|
|
Step 2:
Create a rating system for your attributes by grading them
on a number scale from 1-3. For example, using the attribute ‘rent”, we can grade
it based on how cheap the property is and the payment options available. The cheaper
the rent, the higher the score. If you grade
rent “3”, that means that the rental price is cheaper than the alternatives and you can pay either 1yr, 1yr
6moths and 2yrs rent in advance depending how what you want and can afford. Same can be assumed for
“distance to work”. The further the property is to your work place or campus
the lower it grades on your scale. The same applies to the finishing of the property
etc. If you do this right, your table should now look like this.
|
S/N
|
Attributes
|
Home A
|
Home B
|
Home C
|
|
1
|
rent
|
3
|
2
|
1
|
|
2
|
distance to work
|
2
|
1
|
1
|
|
3
|
finishing
|
3
|
3
|
2
|
|
4
|
TOTAL
|
8
|
6
|
4
|
Step 3:
After grading your attributes, add the numbers assigned to
them. The resulting score will give you a snap shot of what property to select.
From the example above, we can clearly see that Home A is the first choice with the
total score of 8, followed by Home B with the score 6 and finally Home C comes
in last with 4 points. By doing this exercise, the decision practically makes
itself.
Using this method, I was able to help my prospective tenant quickly select one of the homes that he had already seen. If this method worked for him and have been working for all of my clients that have used it, I see no reason why it won't work for you.
If you need a home to rent/property to buy in Enugu, CLICK HERE to make a request.
Have a wonderful day.
