How To Effectively Communicate With Your Tenants
As a landlord, your job is to provide your tenants with a welcoming and safe environment. But, in order for you to establish a long term relationship with your tenant, you need to be able to effectively communicate with them. By respecting your tenants and opening lines of communication it can help to decrease instances of move-outs as well. Let’s take a look at some tips to consider when it comes to communicating with your tenants.
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 injuries 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.
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.
3) Send Notifications Before Conducting Repair and Maintenance Projects
Tenants hate to be surprised by contractors and handymen even if said professional came to service a different tenant. Even though the law does not stipulate that landlords have to let their tenants know in advance, for the sake of establishing a solid relationship, 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 to forget 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. Therefore, as difficult as it may be, never approach your tenant with tension or animosity. At the end of the day, less than stellar or difficult tenants are humans and humans respond much better to respect and civility.
When it’s all said and done, communication gives landlords the opportunity to foster valuable, long lasting relationships with tenants. This can help to reduce move outs and increase tenant satisfaction. It also enables easier resolutions to conflicts. Also, a satisfied tenant would definitely help you secure and maintain everything on your property and with you buying houses as additional investment you will be worry-free about handling it and your tenants! The key thing to remember is that you should make a good first impression with your tenants. This starts from the very first time you give a potential tenant a view of the property.
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