Do You Know Your Tenants? Here Are 5 Reasons You Should!
Being a landlord isn’t an easy task, and you can’t please everyone.
But you can set yourself and your rental community up for success by fostering an environment where everyone feels welcome and heard. Part of fostering that community is getting to know your tenants, something many landlords don’t take the time to do.
Here are 5 reasons every landlord should get to know their tenants:
Better Communication
Communication is the key to any solid relationship, and it’s especially important in the tenant-landlord relationship.
You need to be able to approach your tenants when there are issues you need to address, and they need to feel comfortable coming to you with their concerns. It’s difficult to have this sort of of rapport with your tenants if you don’t take the time to get to know them when there isn’t something going on.
The better you and your tenants know one another, the more open your relationship will be. This allows a level of transparency that’s important to you as a landlord, as your tenants will feel comfortable bringing their problems to you. Once you know there’s an issue, you can fix it to make the community better for everyone.
Additionally, regularly communicating with your tenants means you’re more likely to have updated contact information for them, which can be helpful in a situation where you need to talk with them.
Easier Follow-up
Sometimes, items you need to resolve slip through the cracks.
Phone calls go to voicemail, emails go unanswered, and the door you’re knocking on doesn’t open. And, even though you have the best intentions for looping back around to follow up with a tenant regarding the issue, it just … doesn’t happen.
If you’ve already gotten to know your tenants on a personal level, this sort of follow-up is a lot easier to do. Your tenants are already comfortable talking to you and answering messages from you, so you’re less likely they’ll avoid your attempts to reach out to you.
The follow-up street goes both ways, too.
When your tenants reach out to you with maintenance requests or complaints, they may feel as if they’re not being heard when their problem isn’t solved right away. Instead of it being you avoiding them, you’re waiting to get into contact with a contractor, or to present them with a resolution.
This lack of follow-up isn’t anything malicious, but your tenants - if they don’t already have a relationship with you - can feel as if they’re being slighted. But if they already know you and have made a habit of contacting you, they may feel more comfortable reaching out for a quick update, or they may be more likely to give you some time to solve their problem before you reach out again.
Better Community
The better the people in your rental community know you and one another, the closer the community will feel.
If everyone is complete strangers, keeping their conversations to just in-passing niceties and communicating about absolute necessities, there’s no cohesion to the community. Without cohesion, it’s very difficult for anyone to feel as if they truly “belong” to your rental community outside of their own units.
This lack of community makes it more likely that your renters will leave as soon as they find somewhere new. When your renters have built relationships with you - and with other fellow renters - they feel more of a connection to your community and are less likely to move away.
Improved Safety
Protecting the safety of your rental community is important, as you are responsible for a lot of people and their individual possessions.
If you know your tenants, you’re more likely to recognize the people coming and going from your community and, over time, get to know anyone who shouldn’t be around.
Additionally, being in frequent contact with your tenants ensures you have up-to-date contact information for everyone. In the event that there’s an emergency or you need to check on a tenant, you know you’ve got a recent phone number or email address to get in contact with them instead of worrying whether or not you’ve got the right information.
Better Emergency Preparation
Beyond just knowing you have the correct, most up-to-date contact details for all of your tenants, which helps you respond quickly in an emergency, knowing your tenants is key to a comprehensive emergency preparedness plan.
If you know all your tenants by sight, for example, you’ll be able to scan the crowd during a fire evacuation and know very quickly whether everyone is accounted for. Rather than wasting precious time calling out names and checking on people, you can see at a glance who is missing so you can try to reach them immediately. And, if you cannot reach certain people, you know exactly where to send emergency services in the event that someone needs to be rescued.
Additionally, knowing your tenants and fostering a sense of community with your renters means that your tenants are more likely to look out for one another in an emergency.
If your tenants are friendly with one another, they are all more likely to have one another’s contact information and to know who, for example, may be out of town and out of danger during an emergency.
Building Strong Rental Communities
Managing your rental properties is a full-time, difficult job, but it’s one that can be incredibly rewarding. To help take the routine tasks, maintenance requests, budgeting, rent collection and more, off your plate to free up your time to get to know your tenants, @Assist has created Sugu. This all-in-one, flexible platform can be accessed anywhere in the world, so you can stay on top of things even when you’re away. Try Sugu today!
