Your tenants are more than “just” a paycheck. When landlords build lasting tenant relationships—before a crisis, during a crisis, and beyond—you can boost your income and reduce the amount of turnover you experience from your Salt Lake City properties!
Not every property owner loves interacting with tenants—but building relationships doesn’t mean you have to hang out with your renters. However, keeping a professional and positive relationship with tenants is good for business!
How can property owners create lasting tenant relationships? Follow these tips from the experts in Salt Lake City property management!
Why Do Tenant Relationships Matter?
Good relationships are good business! Sometimes it’s easy to forget that tenants are people, too! They might drive you crazy with too many maintenance requests or a late payment now and then—but when you develop positive tenant relationships, it’s good for your bottom line.
Happy Tenants Stay Home
When tenants are happy, they’re more likely to renew their lease for another term. So what? New tenants are easy to find, right? One tenant leaves, another one moves in.
Sure, you can probably easily find another person to move into your property. However, finding exceptional tenants takes time and a thorough screening process. Replacing a good tenant with a tenant you didn’t screen into your Salt Lake City property can be an expensive mistake.
The tenant search process can be expensive, too! Every time you need to replace a tenant, you deal with:
- Lost rental income until you find the right tenant
- The expenses of an empty property until your new tenant moves in
- The cost of the screening process, from listing your property to spending your valuable time.
When you take tips from the experts in Salt Lake City property management and build excellent tenant relationships, you have residents who are happy and feel at home! Plus, you can often use the lease renewal as an opportunity to make an incremental rental rate increase when you have delighted renters.
Happy Tenants Pay the Rent
You probably do everything you can to make it easy for tenants to pay the rent. Happy tenants happily send in their rent checks or submit their online payments on time every month!
On the other hand, unhappy tenants often withhold rental payments until they get what they want. Whether it’s a maintenance request that takes too long to resolve or they are unhappy for any other reason, unhappy tenants might refuse to pay the rent and cause you further problems. Ensure you’re the best landlord you can be to increase the satisfaction of your renters!
Happy Tenants Protect Your Property
Angry tenants can take out their frustrations on your property. Whether it’s merely neglecting to uphold their responsibilities outlined in the lease or they cause intentional damage, keeping tenants happy is an excellent way to protect your valuable investment!
When you don’t have to spend money on repairs from damage or neglect, your bottom line improves!
How Can Landlords Build Lasting Tenant Relationships?
So, how can landlords build better relationships? You don’t have to be a “people person” to maintain positive, professional interactions with tenants. Following some best practices can go along way to keeping tenants happy!
Show Your Appreciation
A “thank you” can make a big impression! Remember: tenants aren’t just a monthly rent check. They don’t want to feel like they only contribute to your retirement plan.
Maintaining professional boundaries is also a good business practice. However, being a “real” person who appreciates the “real” people living in your rental home helps tenants feel appreciated! Show tenants you appreciate them through:
- Thank you notes
- A small housewarming gift when they move in
- Gift cards to local businesses when it’s time to renew a lease
- A discount off the monthly rent when they switch to automatic monthly payments.
Small things can make a big difference when building good tenant relationships!
Be Responsive
How long does it take you to respond to a maintenance request? Being responsive and staying in touch with tenants helps landlords build better relationships.
It can be overwhelming when your inbox is overrun with maintenance requests, or the phone constantly rings from tenants calling with complaints. However, ducking calls or taking too long to respond can quickly ruin a good start with a tenant.
To maintain good relationships, landlords must:
- Respond to tenant requests within 24-48 hours. Acknowledge the request and schedule a repair as quickly as possible.
- Proactively stay in touch consistently. Check-in with tenants and provide relevant rental property updates.
- Having a profitable rental property means you can’t ignore tenants. Be available and responsive!
Property Management Builds the Best Tenant Relationships
Working so closely with people can be exhausting! Let the professionals handle it. Choosing the best Salt Lake City property management help means hiring the Reeder Asset Management team to build and maintain lasting tenant relationships!
We serve plenty of property owners who prefer a hands-off approach to owning investment properties. Our team handles everything from finding your best tenants to keeping them happy and encouraging renewals. We also make it easy for tenants to pay the rent—even during a crisis. Learn how we do it with our free resource, the Collecting Rent in a Crisis Handbook!