The Tenant Who Never Leaves

The granny flats we've built that never go vacant all have one thing in common. It isn't the rent.

Some granny flats turn over a tenant every ten or twelve months. Same suburb, same rent, same design on paper and yet the one down the road has had the same tenant for four years and counting.

Our licensed builder has been handing over homes across the Illawarra and Shoalhaven for 45 years. After that long, you stop calling it luck. It's the build. Here's what the long-stay flats quietly get right.

It Doesn't Feel Like a Granny Flat

If a tenant walks in and clocks it as a compromise, you've already lost them.

They'll sit the lease out, then move the minute a two-bed unit comes up at the same rent. The flats that hold onto people feel like a proper little home from the front step real ceiling height, real daylight, a kitchen that actually works.

The Bathroom Isn't Tight

This is the room tenants leave over.

A hob-less shower, a full-size vanity, a toilet you can sit on without your knees hitting the door, Phoenix Pina tapware that still looks new after three winters. Cheap out here and no rent drop keeps them.

There Is Actually Storage

Flats without storage rent fast and empty faster, because the tenant's life doesn't fit inside.

Built-in robes with a proper melamine insert — shelves, hanging rail, a three-drawer cabinet — plus a linen cupboard with four shelves. Small details, but they're what turn a rental into somewhere a person can actually live.

The Laundry Is a Laundry

A real 30-litre stainless tub in a proper nook, or a thought-through combined bathroom-laundry with room to move.

We've walked through tenanted flats where the washing machine lives in a bathroom corner. Those tenants are already looking. A laundry that works is one of the quiet reasons a tenant signs the renewal without thinking about it.

It's Quiet

Where the building sits on the block matters as much as the floor plan.

A flat sited three metres from the main house's kids' bedrooms becomes a six-month rental by default. A few metres of separation, a thought-through orientation, and the tenant stops hearing their landlord's family through the wall — and stops browsing real estate on a Sunday night.

So, What Actually Keeps a Tenant?

None of this shows up in a rental ad.

No real-estate photographer captures "the drawers close softly and the bathroom doesn't feel mean." But a tenant feels it in the first fortnight, and they vote with the renewal form.

If you're building to rent, the question isn't how cheaply you can get a tenant in. It's how cheaply you can keep the right one for five years. The math is completely different — and so is the build.

Thinking About Building to Rent?

Our licensed builder has been thinking about that math for 45 years.

Come and walk through our Corrimal display centre. The flats that never go vacant are obvious the minute you step inside — and we'll happily talk you through which inclusions are actually worth the money, and which ones tenants never notice.

Call 0488 428 717  support@wgfs.com.au 104 Collins Street, Corrimal NSW 2518