5 Ways To Improve Tenant Retention
By JD Esajian on July 20, 2017
It is always cheaper paying for customer retention rather than generation. As a rental property owner, you should hang on to good tenants with everything you have. You will never know how much a good tenant is worth until they leave. When you are forced to find a new tenant, you will spend valuable time, and money, replacing them. Retaining good tenants is usually about doing the little things rather than any one specific item. Your tenants need to know they are valued by showing them how much you appreciate them. As any experienced landlord will tell you all tenants are not created equally. Good tenants are worth their weight in gold. Here are five things you can do to help improve tenant retention.
- Get good tenants. Good tenants have a trickle-down effect on everything else you do in the property. The first order of business in retaining tenants is starting with ones you actually want to keep. Instead of rushing the first interested tenant into the property take your time to make sure you have a tenant you really want. This often means spending additional time screening your tenants and developing better online advertising. Whatever time you spend in screening your tenants is well worth it over the course of the lease. If your tenants are poor you will want them out of your house as soon as the lease is over. Instead of looking to keep a good tenant you will find yourself right back at square one. Everything with a rental property revolves around the quality of your tenants. Do whatever it takes to make sure you have the best tenants possible.
- Quick maintenance turnaround. As a landlord, it is important to always try to gauge the pulse of your tenants. If you consistently ask your tenants what they want from a landlord one of the first things they will answer is quick maintenance. Regardless of how updated your property is there will be maintenance at some point during the lease. Most of these are minor in nature but that doesn’t diminish the importance to your tenant. Whatever needs to be done in the property should be taken care of in a timely fashion. Think of the inconvenience of not having a washing machine or not being able to use the toilet for a few days. This may not seem like the end of the world to you but could mean plenty to your tenants. By not resolving these issues in a day or two your tenant will lose faith with you and the property. Instead of doing the little things to take care of things your tenant will let them go which can lead to bigger problems down the road. When the end of the lease comes they will surely remember the maintenance delays and look elsewhere.
- Quick response. You can’t treat your tenants like they are a nuisance to you. If you are going to own rental property you need to accept that there will be plenty of calls, texts or emails at various times of the day. A text about something in the property may not be a huge deal to you but can be something important to them. With all the ways to stay in touch it doesn’t take more than just a few seconds to send a quick text or email. You should make it your goal to return all correspondence within a few hours. You are going to eventually respond anyway so why not do so as quickly as you can. If your tenant hears back from you they know that they are important to you and will go the extra mile sending the rent check out quicker or protecting the property. Treat your tenants, especially good ones, like any other business partner you work with and never make them wait for a response.
- Reach out early. The best landlords are the ones that are the most organized. They never wait for the last minute to get a jump on the property. If you have a good tenant in place it is never too early to ask them to stay. There are many tenants unaware that they can stay past their initial lease term. They think that the lease is only for a year and ends promptly when it is over. By getting the jump and asking if they want to stay you can secure the tenant months in advance. You also give them enough time to decide without putting pressure on them. The earlier you reach out and get an answer the better position you will be in.
- Celebrate milestones. You should never take good tenants for granted. There are landlords who think that supplying a place to live is enough and shouldn’t be celebrated. Sure, you don’t have to praise good tenants but it doesn’t hurt. A small gift card or bottle of wine with every new lease is a small token of appreciation for a good tenant. If your tenant stays in your property three years a few gift cards is a drop in the bucket compared to what they do for you.
Keeping good tenants makes running your property as easy as possible. If you have a good tenant you should go out of your way to make them happy. You never know just how important they are until you are faced with a bad tenant.