How To Effectively Communicate With Your Tenants

As a landlord, your job is to provide your tenants with a welcoming and safe environment. In order for you to establish a long-term relationship with your tenant, you must effectively communicate with them. There are plenty of we buy houses companies that grow too large of a portfolio, causing the quality of their property management to decline. The relationship that you have with your tenants must always remain a top priority.

By respecting your tenants and opening lines of communication, it encourages tenants to continue renting your unit on a longer-term basis. Vacancies are the death of monthly cash flow for investment properties. Consider these actionable tips to help you foster a strong and well-balanced relationship with your tenants. It all begins with communication.

1) Open Door Policy

One of the most effective things you can do to encourage meaningful conversations is to establish an open-door policy as to which you let your tenants know that you’re always open to conversation and can answer any questions they may have.

Regardless if it’s a request for an extension or question regarding their lease, your tenants should feel very comfortable when it comes to approaching you about any topic. An open-door policy will also help to make your tenants feel respected and valued. Unanswered questions, over time, can lead to major issues with your property. What if the tenant notices a leak in the ceiling but is afraid to ask you about it? Keep communication constantly flowing to avoid pitfalls later.

2) Multiple Lines Of Communication

You shouldn’t go off the assumption that by giving your email address to your tenants, most of them will contact you. In fact, everyone has their own preferred way of communicating with people. While some may consider emailing their landlord to be appropriate, some tenants may believe that it’s time-consuming and more of an annoyance than an effective line of communication.

Therefore, your tenants should be able to contact you via multiple lines of communication such as office number, social media profile, text number, full mailing address, email, and more. You should also ask each tenant what their preferred method of communication is and that you’ll contact them via their preferred line of communication.

If your plans are to sell your house with tenants still in the property, you will need to show the end buyer that communicating with them is easy. Homebuyers will not want to purchase a property with bad tenants that come along with it. Ideally, you will be able to show prospective buyers that communicating with your tenants is simple and smooth. Better yet, if you can show legitimate property management reporting, that will give end buyers peace of mind moving forward with the transaction.

3) Send Notifications Before Conducting Repair and Maintenance Projects

Tenants hate to be surprised by contractors and handymen, even if the professional came to service a different tenant. Regardless of the laws in your area, for the sake of establishing a clean relationship with your tenant, it’s highly recommended that you provide them with alerts prior to sending a contractor to the property.

4) Have Patience With Your Tenants

As a landlord, it’s inevitable that at some point, you’ll come across an actively disruptive kind of tenant or a tenant that creates monetary issues, such as being late for rent or forgetting to approve a digital payment for rent. Dealing with tenants like these can prove to be especially frustrating. However, you should have patience with all of your tenants and deal with them professionally.

As difficult as it may be, never approach your tenant with tension or animosity. At the end of the day, difficult tenants are humans and humans respond much better to respect and civility. Be firm when you need to, but always be the bigger person when it comes to conflicts.

Communication gives landlords the opportunity to foster valuable, long-lasting relationships with tenants. This can help to reduce vacancy and increase overall tenant satisfaction. It also enables easier resolutions to conflicts. A satisfied tenant will help you maintain your property rather than destroy it while living there. The key thing to remember is that you should make a good first impression of your tenants. This starts from the very first time you give a potential tenant a view of the property.

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