Increase The Retention Of Your Tenants and Save Yourself Money. I seriously considered entitling this post, “How To Lose Your Tenants in 365 Days or Less.” The truth be told I like the second one better but wondered how many people would read a post with that title. Anyone who knows my business also knows that I do not advertise or market myself as a business that rents, leases or manages income property. However, my die hard, loyal clients know that whenever they purchase an income property from me, I will assist at procuring viable, long term tenants. They know that I am not a property management company but understand tenants needs.
Because I talk to tenants looking to move out of one home into another, I know first hand some of the major reasons tenants opt to abandon ship and look for sunnier shores.
One of the most common reasons tenants choose to leave once a one year lease concludes is due to a property owner’s failure to make timely repairs. This includes either not responding to the repair requests or responding and dragging the time that it takes to completely resolve the issue out.
One of the benefits of being a tenant versus a homeowner is not being burdened with home repairs. However, once a tenant realizes that what should be a simple phone call followed by a repair turns into endless phone calls, time lost from work due to waiting around for repairs, loss of use of portions of the property, etc in sets a disdain for the property as a whole.
One trick related to understanding property management is to understand that should you invest in income property you are signing up as a customer service representative. There is a fine art to understanding what stellar customer service really means. Stellar customer service means that a tenant is not left making numerous phone calls for the same repair repeatedly. It means that in the unlikely event something really needs attention that it does not begin to seriously impact the way a tenant lives. It should not require prolonged provisions and accommodations being made on behalf of the tenant. Once a tenant has been seriously inconvenienced for a prolong period of time and there have been no attempts at concessions by the owner, this is almost a guarantee that the tenant will not make this place their home once their lease is up.
Retention means less money out of an owner’s pocket in the end. Each time a tenant moves there is lost income due to the time it takes to market a property. Additionally, there is time and expense involved in physically preparing the property for the next tenant. It is much wiser for a property owner to fcus their efforts on keeping tenants happy and thus retaining good tenants.
