As a landlord, you should be extremely mindful of the way you interact with your renters. While you may not necessarily agree with every concern or complaint a tenant throws your way, it’s in your best interest to treat renter feedback with importance. So, if this is your first time as a landlord, you can benefit from familiarizing yourself with some of the most common tenant grievances. Forming a solid understanding of the following grievances can help ensure that you’re well-equipped to keep your renters satisfied.
Intrusive Renovations
No tenant relishes having to deal with intrusive renovations. However, as any seasoned landlord can attest, they’re an unavoidable part of property ownership – especially when it comes to older properties. To help make large-scale renovations less stressful for tenants, take care to provide them with as much advance notice as possible. As soon as a start date and general time-frame are decided upon, make sure to let all your renters know via text, email, phone call, letter or any combination thereof.
When carrying out ambitious renovations, make sure to utilize dependable planning and zoning software. Furthermore, make a point of only doing business with licensed contractors. Giving your business to unlicensed contractors may strike you as a good way to cut costs, but working with unlicensed individuals stands to lose you a lot more money than it stands to save you.
Unwarranted Rent Increases
There are a variety of reasons for which landlords raise rent. In fact, rents are currently on the rise in various parts of the U.S. Justifiable reasons for rent increases include rising property taxes, increased housing demand and heightened maintenance and operating costs. However, not all landlords raise rent for reasons like these. In some cases, landlords simply wish to collect more rent from tenants and won’t hesitate to increase rental rates at every available opportunity.
While it can’t be denied that landlords are in this business to earn money, there are limits to how much tenants should be pressed financially. If constant increases make it impossible for certain tenants to comfortably afford rent, you should expect to see your renter retention rate fall. Furthermore, depending on the location of this property, finding new tenants who can readily afford your high rates may be a difficult undertaking.
Of course, this isn’t to say that you should never increase your rental rates. After all, as stated above, it’s sometimes necessary for landlords to do so. However, when you impose rent increases, make sure to provide your tenants with a clear explanation as to why. While no tenant is going to be pleased by the prospect of paying more rent, they’re still likely to appreciate receiving an explanation.
Poor Communication
It’s easy to see why so many renters desire the ability to contact their respective landlords with ease. Having a direct line to one’s landlord means being able to report repair requests, problems with neighbors and various other issues in a timely manner. So, in addition to making yourself available to your tenants, take care to respond to any requests they make of you in an expedient fashion. For example, if a tenant contacts you during regular business hours, try to provide them with a response before the end of the day. Furthermore, if a tenant communique is received during the workweek, they shouldn’t have to wait more than 24 hours for a response.
Tenants should also be given a phone number and email address at which you can be reached during normal business hours, as well as a number to call if an emergency occurs after-hours. If you keep an office on the property, you may want to consider having open office hours on either a daily or weekly basis or allowing renters to schedule sit-downs with you, as this will enable tenants to speak to you directly about a variety of issues. Additionally, any tenant you speak with should be encouraged to invest in renters insurance, as homeowners insurance can’t be applied to rental properties.
Addressing tenant grievances should be among the most important duties of any landlord. Unfortunately, some property owners habitually ignore the needs of their tenants and regard them as nothing more than a source of passive income. Unsurprisingly, this approach will not endear you to your renters, nor will it do your tenant retention rates any favors. In the interest of maximizing retention and enjoying non-adversarial relationships with your tenants, you’ll need to understand and empathize with a number of common grievances. Read more about liangzhongmiye.
