Swale Daily Bidding pilot a big success

Void times have been reduced by a third in Swale Borough Council during a four month pilot testing Daily Bidding.

Most choice based lettings systems run on a two weekly cycle. However, Kent Homechoice believed daily bidding on properties could bring many benefits for both customers and the scheme partners.

From initial concept, LHS delivered the system upgrade allowing Daily Bidding in just 6 months. The Swale pilot system has now been running successfully for 4 months and has now been formally reviewed prior to a planned roll out across the whole of Kent.

Key highlights of the performance review include:

Void time has reduced by a third
Advertise “To Let” has reduced by half
Bids per Applicant reduced by 22 per cent
Bids per property up by 3 per cent
84 per cent of customers used the new approach

“This is a sea change in supporting the relationship between Local Authorities and Social Housing Landlords. The old void time issues have melted away in Swale, with tenants, staff and managers grasping the nettle and using daily bidding like it has always been there,” said Peter Riley, Managing Director of LHS.

The Daily Bidding pilot works in this way:

Adverts have a minimum bidding period of 5 days.
If bidding ends at midnight on Fridays or Saturdays it automatically extended to Sunday.
The property lists are updated at midnight every night.
The bidding closes date appears on every advert and the bidding date changes to today or tomorrow when relevant.