How are you treating your tenants right now?
Being a rental property owner comes with its challenges. Filing an eviction on a tenant that is behind on their rent is the only way to be successful as a landlord/manager, BUT....this time it’s different. This is a once in a lifetime occurrence that will make or break landlords, managers and companies.
Attorneys advise that you have to treat every tenant the same. You must have policies and procedures and stick to them no matter what. I agree with that most of the time. Still, if you expect me to treat a tenant that has paid rent on time and taken care of our property for 5 years the same way as a tenant that is habitually late and not communicating with us, I will tell you that is a bad long-term business strategy. More importantly, it’s not how you build lasting relationships with good tenants. Prior to this pandemic we have always worked with our good tenants during tough times and this extreme situation is no different.
My conversations with our property management clients have been consistent during this tough time and it comes down to a few basic questions. Were they a great tenant before this happened? Are they communicating with us? Are they trying to get on a payment plan? Are they maintaining the property? If the answer is yes to all these questions, then I firmly believe we as landlords and managers have an OBLIGATION to ride this out with them. If the answer is no to all these questions, then you file for eviction immediately. If the answers are mixed, then we have to use empathy and do our best to work with them. Especially if questions 1 and 3 are yes and the reason they are not communicating is because they are embarrassed.
As I’m writing this, I can hear some of my fellow landlords saying, “If they are living in my property they should have money saved for a rainy day.” My response to them is, we as landlords should have capital saved for a rainy day as well. But this isn’t a rainy day, this is a Hurricane and if we stop pointing fingers and work together then we will all get to see the sunshine after the storm.
Do you all agree or am I being too nice?