Make Life Easy For Your Tenants

Creating a good, positive relationship with your tenants is very important. Tenants are the backbone of a successful rental property business so building and nurturing that relationship will contribute to a landlord's success. One of the best ways that I know to help accomplish this is to make your tenant's life as easy as possible while they live in your property.

When it comes to “who should do what” between tenants and landlords, conflict often arises unless your expectations are clear from the start. Begin with the Lease Agreement where you can list things like the rent and when it is due, how it is going to be paid, late payment penalties, rules regarding guests, minor repair expectations and utility agreements. Review the lease with the tenant page by page and have them initial that they have read it and understand your rules.

Continue by leaving a tenant binder in each of your properties. The binder can include emergency numbers so that the tenant knows who to call for a gas leak or power outage. It should include yard expectations like lawn mowing and snow removal. It can also include a move out checklist so the tenant knows what you expect in order to receive their security deposit back.

Throughout the tenancy, there are lots of things you can do to make a tenant's life simpler. Let's start with the yard. If you want the yard to look nice and you don't want your house to look like a "rental" - then make the yard very low maintenance. Apart from basic lawn mowing and snow shoveling, most tenant's will not spend extra time on the yard. Let's face it - it's not their yard so there's no pride of ownership. Not in my experience anyways. If you have to have any plants at all - make them perennials. Surround them with thick black gardening cloth that makes it hard for weeds to peek through and then cover that with rocks. Do the same around any trees. Providing a container of weed killer might inspire a tenant to use it but it's not likely so try to slow down those weeds on your own. Another thing you can do is have a professional company come once or twice in the summer and spray the lawn with fertilizer and weed control.

Another handy trick to make a tenant's life easier is to either install a keybox or put keyless entry locks on the outside doors. This will prevent you having to run over in the middle of the night (or ever) for tenant's who have lost their keys. The code can be changed on the keybox the next day when you return the key and keyless lock codes can be changed with each new tenant.

These are just a few ideas to help you establish and maintain great relationships with your tenants. Do you have any other ideas you'd like to share about how you make your tenant's lives easier?