There are plenty of nightmare tenants out there, so when you end up with a good renter in your home, it’s important to keep them happy. Tenant retention is one of the most critical components of your property-management income as it can lead to lower overhead with respect to marketing, showing apartments and paying for tenant screening. The ideal situation is having tenants who want a long-term lease with your property and only leave because they’re buying a house of their own. One of the major ways to make a landlord-tenant relationship work is by being responsive to tenant issues.
What Does Being Responsive Mean?
You want to achieve a balance between interacting with your tenants and giving them their privacy. Regular interaction makes your tenants comfortable in communicating potential issues with you, but sometimes it’s easy to cross the line between being a professional landlord and being overly friendly. You want your tenants to be comfortable enough to bring up problems long before they would get frustrated, but not so comfortable that they forget you share a professional relationship.
1. Increasing Tenant Retention
One of the biggest benefits of being responsive to your tenants is that they have a comfortable living environment without any major complaints. Being on top of maintenance issues and checking in regularly for repairs can increase your tenant’s overall level of satisfaction.
2. Getting Referrals for Other Properties
Happy tenants recommend friends and family members for your other properties. If you have a vacancy and don’t want to spend the time and money to list your rental at the usual places, take a look at your existing referral network. Make it clear that referrals reflect on the tenant, and it’s likely you’ll end up with high-quality renters.
3. Increase the Value on Your Home
Your tenants are the ones spending all of their time on your property, and the little quality-of-life improvements that they suggest could add value to your property. While the improvements might not be the flashiest of upgrades, they will reflect in the market rent you can charge or the eventual listing price of your home.
4. Check-in With Tenants at End of Lease
Touch base with tenants nearing the end of their lease to see if there’s any dangling issues that could cause them to leave. Frequent check-ins give your tenants the opportunity to communicate any annoyances or major issues. Some tenants are shy and don’t want to bother you with what they perceive are minor issues. Even a minor issue can lead to a quality tenant leaving if it’s a big enough problem in their eyes.
5. Avoid Major Disasters
Avoid major disasters in your home. Ever have a problem with a tenant who refused to tell you about major issues until the house is filled with standing water from a burst pipe? You don’t want to put your tenant on the spot when you ask about the condition of the home, but you also don’t want to shell out thousands of dollars because they don’t want to let you know about problems. Stay calm and avoid chastising your tenant because the issue at hand may or may not have been their fault.
Keeping tenants happy allows you to grow your business as you keep a steady stream of income and you don’t have to sink costs into marketing, tenant turnover, and other overhead costs. This also allows you to grow your property management business, as you can focus your efforts on acquiring other properties.
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