Grow Your Concierge Business: Find, Win and Retain Property Owners

Find owners without an ad budget

A landlord rarely looks for a concierge company through an ad. They ask their accountant, their notary, a friend who invests. The channels that bring in mandates are therefore the ones that put you inside that circle of trust. We cover six of them in our article on ways to find property owners without an ad budget.

Referral sources: notaries and accountants

Every inheritance and every rental purchase goes through them, and they usually have no property management solution to offer their client. Target 5 to 10 firms in your area, offer a coffee rather than a sales meeting, and sum up your service in one sentence. A first email isn’t enough: plan on 2 to 3 follow-ups, spaced out, then a quarterly check-in once the relationship is in place.

Referrals: your satisfied owners

A “don’t hesitate to recommend me” produces nothing. Set up a written program: what the referrer gets (for example, one month of fees waived per mandate they bring in), how they pass you a contact, and a reminder in every monthly report. Also ask every satisfied owner for a Google review: it feeds your profile.

Local search visibility

An owner who types “concierge company” followed by their city’s name should find you. A Google Business Profile is free. Aim for 15 to 20 reviews above 4.5/5, choose “Concierge service” or “Property management” as your main category, and answer every negative review.

On that last point, see why September is the right time to grow your concierge business.

Win a full portfolio

An owner with several properties rarely hands over more than one at the start. They test you. What makes them move their whole portfolio to you isn’t promises, it’s signs of structure. Our article on how to convince an owner to entrust you with all their properties covers them in detail.

A clear offer first

An à la carte offer looks flexible. In practice, it makes you rebuild a contract with every signature and puts you in the position of a contractor who gets adjusted. An owner who answers “I’ll think about it” often stumbles on that vagueness, not on the price: that’s the subject of our article on the concierge offer that makes owners hesitate.

Proof instead of promises

“I take care of everything” reassures no one. Show your system: when and how the owner gets paid out, a sample monthly report, the occupancy rate of comparable properties, your response time. A clean spreadsheet is enough, as long as it’s updated every month.

Talk about the properties they haven’t handed over

Ask how their other properties are doing, and which one performs worst. Then offer options: a furnished lease on a property far from the center to secure the off-season, a hybrid package on a one-bedroom. An owner who is wondering about an agency mostly wants a solid framework for long-term rental. Carte G delegation (the carte G being the French property management license) lets you offer it to them while staying their point of contact: the arguments to give them are in our article on an owner who prefers an agency. See also our full guide to carte G delegation.

Multi-unit investors

An investor holding properties through a property investment company (SCI) or the owner of an income property can hand you 10 or 20 units in one signature. They don’t expect the same offer as the owner of a single studio: tiered pricing, consolidated reporting, a single point of contact and per-unit tracking of funds.

Retain your owners

A guest stays a few nights, an owner stays several years. Losing a mandate costs you years of recurring revenue, not one night. An owner rarely cancels over a cleaning that wasn’t perfect: they leave when management becomes a black box and two worries set in. Am I getting paid what I should be? What state is my property in? Our article on owner retention for concierge companies lays out the method.

Getting out of the banking gray zone

The third habit isn’t only a matter of trust. The Hoguet Law (the 1970 French law regulating real estate professionals) governs the holding of funds on behalf of others: receiving or holding funds in breach of its rules is punishable by two years in prison and a €30,000 fine (article 16). The topic is covered in our guide on Hoguet Law compliance and handling client funds.

With split payment, rent collection lands in a payment account set up in the owner’s name, then splits automatically between their share, your commission and your service providers. The owner follows every movement instead of waiting for a lump-sum bank transfer.

An offer that follows the owner over time

Owners change goals: maximum yield one year, peace of mind the next. If you only offer short-term rental, they leave the day they want stability. A hybrid concierge offer covers these cases: short-term rental in high season, a furnished lease or a mobility lease (bail mobilité, a 1 to 10 month furnished lease with no deposit) in winter, long-term rental for those who want steady rent. The basics are laid out in our guide to long-term rental management, and the case of slow months in our article on off-season income.

In long-term rental, a shaky tenant journey quickly reaches the owner. Test your tenant journey yourself: application, lease signing, move-in inspection report.

Add value to your portfolio and optimize it

A 100% short-term rental concierge company generates revenue, but little resale value: the business depends on your presence, with no multi-year contracts. A portfolio of long-term property management mandates, on the other hand, produces recurring revenue and can be valued. The reasoning is laid out in our article on the value of a concierge management portfolio.

Estimating a portfolio’s value

The common method multiplies the portfolio’s monthly revenue by a number of months. The orders of magnitude used in our article: €50 to €100 excl. VAT per unit per month, and a multiplier of 12 to 36 months depending on portfolio quality.

The multiplier goes up with owner loyalty and low vacancy. These amounts are indicative, not an enforceable valuation method.

Help owners optimize their taxes

An owner who earns more stays longer. Two levers are a matter for their accountant, but you can point them out.

For furnished rentals under the actual-expenses regime, taxable income is calculated by deducting from rent the expenses incurred, including your fees, and depreciation of furniture and of the property, excluding the land, is allowed up to the amount of rent minus other expenses. Your invoices become supporting documents: see our article on concierge fees that are tax deductible.

Para-hotel services (para-hôtellerie, a VAT regime for rentals that include hotel-like services) bring lodging into the scope of VAT. According to tax guidance, the guest must have access to at least three of the following four services: breakfast, regular cleaning of the premises, household linen, reception. The services must actually be offered, and the offer must include stays of thirty days or less. A simple key box, with no alternative for in-person welcome, isn’t a reception. The VAT recovery mechanism and the worked example are in our article on para-hotel services as a signing argument.

Scaling up with income properties

An entire building means a single relationship, a single cleaning and maintenance logistics setup. But it is almost never 100% seasonal: a shop on the ground floor, short-term rental on the upper floors, a mobility lease or a Civil Code lease (a lease governed by the general rules of the French Civil Code rather than the 1989 residential tenancy law) elsewhere. Our article on managing an income property shows how to run these mixed leases with consolidated reporting.

Automate before you reach 20 properties

Many concierge companies stall around 5 properties. It isn’t a question of skill: at 2 or 3 properties, everything fits in your head; by the 6th, every repeated manual task becomes a breaking point. Our article on the 5-property ceiling in short-term rental analyzes the causes. The answer comes in three stages, taken from our list of what to automate before you reach 20 properties.

1. 1

   Before 5 properties: lay the groundwork

   A central scheduling tool, a standard property sheet (codes, instructions, access), a written check-in and check-out process, and invoicing and payment tracking handled with software.

2. 2

   Before 10 properties: automate what repeats

   Guest messages sent by your PMS, a shared cleaning checklist, a monthly call set up with each owner, an up-to-date vendor database, template documents.

3. 3

   Before 20 properties: professionalize and secure

   A package offer, automated owner reports, automatic reminders, incident traceability, a compliant framework for leases.

Delegate with a framework

Delegating isn’t handing off a task, it’s writing the framework in which a third party can step in without lowering quality: a cleaning sheet with photos of the expected result, message scripts that say when you must be consulted, a check-in every 2 or 3 weeks. A simple rule to start: one delegated task per month. Our article on what you gain by no longer doing everything yourself lays out the method.

Decide before accepting a unit

A badly located unit, a difficult owner or too much turnover can throw your whole organization off balance. Score each property on four criteria: logistics, quality of the relationship, commission, time required. Sometimes the right decision is to say no.

Automate money flows first

Calculating each owner’s share by hand and chasing payments doesn’t scale. With split payment, commission, owner share and payouts to service providers are calculated according to your rules at the moment rent is collected, and Unlocker can connect to your PMS through an API. For leases, carte G delegation provides the framework without creating an agency. The details are on the page Unlocker for concierge companies.