Which Channel Finds Your Tenant
Five lead channels, 1,140 enquiries: which one signs tenants
A Klang Valley rental agency was spending RM1,510 a month across five lead channels and could not say which one produced a signed tenant.
The enquiries came through five doors: PropertyGuru, Mudah.my, Google Ads, Meta Ads, and WhatsApp referrals. Each platform reported its own numbers, so the agency ranked channels by how busy the inbox looked. The one measure that pays rent, cost per signed tenancy, stayed invisible. We followed all 1,140 enquiries from December 2025 to May 2026, across 10 listings, through to their outcomes.
The ranking inverted once tenants were counted instead of leads. Mudah brought 459 enquiries, 40% of everything the agency received, and signed nobody: 15% were qualified and most ended as no-reply, lowball, or mismatch. WhatsApp referrals were the opposite, 101 enquiries but 67% qualified, and they signed two tenants at zero cost. Cost per tenancy told the whole story:
- WhatsApp referral: RM0, two tenancies
- PropertyGuru: RM1,350
- Google Ads: RM1,800
- Meta Ads: RM2,400
- Mudah.my: undefined, zero tenancies on RM360 spent
Google Ads had the highest cost per enquiry at RM31, forty times Mudah's, yet it became the second-cheapest source of tenants because half its leads were qualified. The cheapest leads were worth the least.
Two leaks sat underneath. Meta signed only rooms, wasting roughly a third of its budget on whole units and studios it never converts. And RM682 of paid leads went unanswered, RM302 of it after 8pm and at weekends, where the unanswered rate ran 20% against 7% in office hours.
The recommendation is to manage channels by cost per tenancy, formalize the referral ask at every signing, cap Meta to room campaigns, and close the after-hours gap with a same-day acknowledgement.