How Serviced Accommodation Operators Win New Properties from Landlords

The short answer: Landlords hand over a property when they trust you with the asset, understand exactly what you are offering, and can reach you easily. So settle the offer first, build one honest trust story with your own proof, give landlords a page and an enquiry route that actually works, and log every enquiry in a CRM. Work warm conversations before cold ones, and treat paid advertising as the last step, not the first.

Part of our guide to serviced accommodation marketing in the UK.

Operators ask us how to win more properties from landlords, not only more guests. It makes sense: for a growing serviced accommodation business, each new unit adds income every night it is let, while a single booking is over when the guest checks out.

The trouble is that most of what operators know about marketing is guest marketing: listings, photos, reviews, rates. Winning a landlord is a different sale, closer to a business-to-business deal than a booking. This guide sets out the method we use when we plan landlord acquisition with an operator, step by step, in the order we would do it. It is a method, not a promise of units. How many properties it brings in depends on your market, your offer and how many conversations you have.

Why winning a landlord is a different sale

A guest is buying a few nights. A landlord is handing over an asset that is often their largest investment, along with their mortgage, their insurance and their reputation with neighbours and freeholders. The decision is about risk, not price alone.

That changes everything about how you sell:

	Guest booking	Landlord or developer
Value of one “yes”	One stay	Every night the property is with you, for the length of the agreement
How many you need	Hundreds a year	A handful a year can change the business
Time to decide	Minutes	Weeks or months, often with a partner, lender or board involved
What they worry about	Price, location, photos	Damage, void months, compliance, getting the property back
Where they look	Booking.com, Airbnb, Google	Your website, your LinkedIn, people they already know

Because the volume is low and the value is high, one missed enquiry costs a lot. That is why the unglamorous parts of this guide, the enquiry form and the CRM, matter as much as the marketing.

Know who you are selling to

“Landlords” covers several different buyers, and each asks different questions first. Decide which two or three you want, because one page and one message cannot speak to all of them equally.

Who	What they usually want	Their first question
Private landlord with one or two flats	A better or steadier return than a long let, without the hassle	Will my flat be looked after?
Portfolio landlord	Higher yield on some units, and one manager they can rely on	Can you handle several, and what will it cost?
Developer with unsold or unlet stock	Income and occupancy while units wait to sell or let, and a building that looks lived in	How quickly can you start, and how do we get the units back?
Asset manager or build-to-rent owner	A partner for a block or part of one, with reporting	Show me your systems, insurance and reporting.
Letting and estate agents	Somewhere to send landlords they cannot help	What is in it for my client, and for me?

Developers and asset managers are worth a separate approach because the deal size is bigger and the conversation is more formal. We cover it in how to pitch developers with unsold or unlet stock.

Step 1: Settle the offer before you market it

This is the step most operators skip. Do not spend money sending landlords to a page that cannot answer the question every landlord asks first: what exactly are you offering me?

Most UK operators offer one or both of two models:

	Management contract	Guaranteed rent (a fixed rent to the landlord)
Suits	A landlord who wants the upside and some control	A landlord or developer who wants a fixed, predictable income
Who carries the void risk	The landlord	You
What the landlord compares	Your percentage fee against other managers’ fees	Your monthly rent against what a long let would pay
What you need settled	Fee, what it includes, minimum term, notice period	Rent by property type and area, length, break clauses, who pays bills and repairs

Two practical rules:

1. Give a number or a range. “Competitive fees” tells a landlord nothing. National management companies publish percentage fees on their websites, and landlords will compare you with them. If you cannot publish a price, publish a range and what changes it (location, size, number of bedrooms).
2. Make the advert match the offer. An advert that promises guaranteed rent will disappoint if the real offer is a management fee, and the landlord will feel misled at the first call. Settle which you lead with, then write everything else to match.

If guaranteed rent is part of your offer, be honest with yourself about the risk. You are paying the rent whether the property is booked or not, so price it from your own occupancy and nightly rates, not from a hopeful forecast.

Step 2: Build one trust story

Most landlord pages from management companies say the same three things: professional, responsive, maximise your income. A landlord reading five of them cannot tell them apart. Your job is to find the one thing that is genuinely true about you and that answers the landlord’s real worry, which is whether the property will be looked after.

Write it as one sentence, then a second sentence that proves it. For example, an operator with an in-house maintenance team might say that when something needs fixing, it is their own team, not a contractor. An operator with a corporate guest base might lead with who stays: mostly people on work trips, booked by their employer.

Then back it with proof, in the order a landlord cares about:

1. Management proof first. Guest review scores and counts from Booking.com, Airbnb or Google, shown as figures with the source and date. Occupancy if you can show it honestly. A landlord reads guest reviews as evidence of how you run a property.
2. How long you have traded, and who runs it. Real names, real faces, the size of the team.
3. Compliance. Insurance, safety certificates, any licence or registration your area needs, membership of a redress scheme or professional body if you have one. We cover what landlords check in what landlords ask before they hand over a property.
4. A landlord who will vouch for you. A short statement from an existing landlord is the strongest proof there is, but only with their permission and only in words they have approved.

Use proof from the right business. If you also run a renovation or cleaning company, its reviews are evidence of that work, not of property management. Label them honestly, or a sharp landlord will notice.

Step 3: Fix the front door

A landlord who has heard your name will look you up before they call. Whatever they find in the next two minutes decides whether they get in touch.

The basics. Check each one on your own site:

• A page for landlords, linked from the main menu, separate from the guest booking pages. Guests and landlords want completely different things, and a landlord should not have to scroll past nightly rates to find you.
• A contact link in the main menu, and a phone number and email address that can be tapped on a phone, on every page.
• One clear enquiry route on the landlord page, with a short form: name, email, phone (optional), property location, number of units, and a free-text box.
• A form that goes to an inbox someone reads every working day, with an alert to a named person. A form that sends to an old or shared address nobody checks is worse than no form, because the landlord thinks they have been ignored.
• A confirmation message that tells the landlord their enquiry arrived and when to expect a reply.

The five-minute test. Ask a friend to find your landlord page from your homepage on their phone, fill in the form and time how long it takes you to reply. If they struggle to find it, or the reply takes days, fix that before anything else in this guide.

What goes on the page itself, section by section, is in our guide to the landlord landing page that converts.

Step 4: Capture every enquiry in a CRM

Landlord enquiries arrive in different ways: the website form, a phone call, a LinkedIn message, an introduction at an event. If they live in one person’s inbox and memory, some are forgotten, and if that person leaves, the pipeline leaves with them.

Log every one in a single place. A shared spreadsheet is enough on the first day. A light CRM (HubSpot’s free tier, Pipedrive or your PMS’s own CRM if it has one) is better once you have more than a handful. Record:

• Date in, name, company
• Type: private landlord, portfolio landlord, developer, asset manager, agent
• Source: website, phone, LinkedIn, referral (and from whom), event
• Who replied and how fast
• The next step and its date
• Marketing consent, if you plan to email them anything beyond replying to their enquiry

Connect the website form so every submission lands in the CRM automatically, not only in an inbox. Then look at the list once a week. Your own reply time is the first number that tells you whether the front door works.

Step 5: Turn the lights on

You cannot improve what you cannot see. Before spending time or money driving landlords to your site, make sure it counts them.

• Google Analytics 4 with conversion events for “form submitted” and “phone number tapped”. Our guide to measuring direct bookings in GA4 covers the set-up, and the same events work for landlord enquiries.
• Google Search Console, so you can see which searches show your site and which pages appear.
• The Meta pixel and the LinkedIn Insight Tag, installed but not used yet. They start collecting audiences now, which you may want later if you test paid advertising.

This is usually about a day’s work for whoever looks after your website, and it is the precondition for knowing whether anything else is working.

Step 6: Work the warm channels first

Cold landlord acquisition is slow and expensive to prove. A paid test needs weeks just to tell you what a landlord enquiry costs. Warm conversations can start this week.

Somebody has to be the front door. In most small operators it is the founder or the person who looks after new business. The website and the CRM exist to make that person’s conversations land: when a landlord they met on Tuesday looks them up on Wednesday, the page should confirm everything they said.

Where those conversations come from:

• Your existing landlords. Ask each one for two or three introductions, and for permission to quote them. People who own one property often know others who do.
• Developers and their agents. New-build schemes with units waiting to sell or let are a natural fit. See how to pitch developers.
• Letting and estate agents. Agents meet landlords who are tired of long lets or who have a property a long let does not suit. Some operators win landlords through agents, so it is worth testing as a referral route.
• LinkedIn, from a personal profile first. People respond to a person before a company page. A light, regular cadence works better than bursts: a useful post a week and a few thoughtful comments on posts by landlords, agents and developers in your area. Our guide to social media for serviced accommodation covers the habits.
• Events and property networks. Landlord meet-ups, property investor groups and local business events, where you can meet people face to face.

Close the loop. After every event or conversation, note what drew a follow-up question and what got a polite nod. A voice note on the way home is enough. After a month, those notes tell you which framing works, and they should rewrite the words on your landlord page.

Step 7: Add paid advertising last, and narrowly

Paid advertising can work for landlord acquisition, but only once the offer is settled, the page is live, enquiries land in the CRM and analytics is counting them. Before that, any money you spend is unmeasurable.

When you are ready:

• Set a fixed test budget and a fixed length, long enough to get a real cost per landlord enquiry, then decide whether to continue.
• Go narrow. Broad searches such as “property management company” plus a big city are dominated by national operators with large budgets. Narrow angles are cheaper and convert better: your own area, a specific type of landlord, or developers and portfolio landlords targeted on LinkedIn by job title and industry.
• Lead with your trust story, not the platforms. The advert, the page and the first call should all say the same thing.
• Judge it on enquiries and meetings, not clicks.

We do not quote a typical cost per landlord lead, because we have not seen a verified figure, and it varies widely by market. Your test gives you your own number. Our paid advertising service explains how we run these tests.

How to measure progress

Traffic and form fills are not the goal. Track the things that turn into units:

1. Conversations had (calls, meetings, introductions)
2. Follow-ups sent, and how quickly
3. Meetings or property viewings booked
4. Proposals sent
5. Units signed

Set a weekly conversation target that fits the time you actually have, review it monthly, and change the page and the pitch based on what the conversations teach you.

A 30-day starting plan

Week	What to do
1	Settle the offer. Test your enquiry form and fix where it goes. Add a contact link to the menu and make the phone number tappable. Install analytics with form and phone events. Start the enquiry log.
2	Write and publish the landlord page with your trust story and proof as figures. Connect the form to your CRM. Ask existing landlords for introductions and permission to quote them.
3 to 4	Work your list: introductions, developers, agents, LinkedIn. Note what lands after each conversation.
4	Review what you learned. Rewrite the page from the conversations. Decide whether you are ready for a paid test.

The front-door checklist

Print this and tick it off:

• We have written our offer down: management fee, guaranteed rent or both, with numbers or ranges
• Our landlord page is linked from the main menu
• Our phone number and email can be tapped on a phone, on every page
• Our landlord form goes to an inbox someone reads every working day, with an alert
• The form shows a confirmation message with a reply time
• Every enquiry is logged with its type, source, reply time and next step
• Analytics counts form submissions and phone taps
• Our proof is on the page as figures with sources: review scores and counts, years trading, team, compliance
• We have asked our existing landlords for introductions and a statement we can use
• We know our weekly conversation target

Common mistakes

• Advertising before the offer is settled. The first call then becomes a negotiation about what you meant.
• One page for guests and landlords. Neither reader finds what they came for.
• A form nobody monitors. A contact form can quietly send to an address that was set up years ago and is no longer checked.
• Generic claims. “Professional and responsive” is on every competitor’s page. Use your own figures.
• Relying on one person’s memory. If the relationships are not in a CRM, they are not really the company’s.
• Judging success on traffic. Ten good conversations beat a thousand visits.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do serviced accommodation operators find landlords?

Mostly through warm routes: introductions from existing landlords, direct conversations with developers, referrals from letting and estate agents, and the operator’s own network on LinkedIn and at property events. A clear landlord page and a working enquiry route then turn those conversations into enquiries. Paid advertising can add to this once the offer and the page are in place.

Should I offer guaranteed rent or a management fee?

It depends on how much risk you want to carry. With guaranteed rent you pay the landlord a fixed amount whether the property is booked or not, so it suits landlords who want certainty and operators with reliable occupancy. A management fee leaves the risk and the upside with the landlord. Many operators offer both. Whichever you choose, publish the terms or a range, so landlords can compare.

Do I need a separate website for landlords?

No. One website with a dedicated landlord page, linked from the main menu, is usually better than a second site, because it keeps your search strength and your guest reviews in one place. The landlord page needs its own message, proof and enquiry form.

When should I start paid advertising for landlords?

After the offer is settled, the landlord page is live, enquiries are logged in a CRM and analytics counts form submissions. Then run a fixed-budget test with narrow targeting to find your own cost per landlord enquiry.

If you would rather hand the build to someone, we do this for operators: the landlord page, enquiry capture and CRM routing, then the campaigns. See landlord acquisition for serviced accommodation operators.