Communicating effectively with your tenants starts with the very first interaction – often a screening phone call. Each time prospective tenants call about a property, it is imperative to describe your screening criteria in a clear but friendly way. This may aid you greatly to get a sense of who your potential tenant might be but additionally to start to establish expectations relating to the landlord-tenant relationship.
In the case when a tenant has successfully completed the screening process, another key aspect of effective communication is checking out the lease documents. Your lease documents are more than just a legal contract. They ought to straightforwardly outline the responsibilities for both you and your tenants, along with things such as landscaping maintenance, parking, and pets, to quote a few. Your lease should also detail how you will handle future communication. It’s always a great idea to start early and encourage your tenant to communicate with you regularly. This is something that’s been made easier with software, apps, and online tenant portals. Just by ensuring that your tenant clearly understands the lease documents and offering them a chance to ask questions, you encourage them to take their responsibilities very seriously.
Effective tenant communication doesn’t end when your tenant moves in, however. To seriously keep the lines of communication open, you will need to establish a set of guidelines for how and when regular communication will take place. By way of illustration, your lease has got to provide specific information in terms of how much notice you will provide tenants with before entering the property or performing routine maintenance. Typically this timeframe is specified in state or local landlord laws, but you can likewise increase the timetable as a show of goodwill. Quite a lot of experts suggest providing one week’s advance notice before routine maintenance can be conducted and delivering that notice in more than one format (a phone call and an email, as an illustration).
In the case of an emergency, effective communication takes on a new urgency. As a property owner, it is significant to ensure that your tenants can contact you in the event of a serious problem with the property. It is also critical that your response is both prompt and proactive. You need to address emergency repair requests as soon as possible, but no later than a few hours following the tenant contacts you. It is, moreover, necessary to communicate more often with a tenant in an emergency, sending updates of when and how repairs will be made and any actions the tenant should take. By continuing to keep the lines of communication open, you can make sure your tenants trust you and share better information with regards to the condition of the property throughout their tenancy.
Finally, don’t forget to practice the golden rule in your associations with your tenants. Treating them with the same respect and courtesy that you expect from others can go a long way toward building good tenant relations and cultivating a culture of effective communication. Definitely, hiring a trustworthy Christiansburg property manager is also a great way to ensure clear and effective communication with all your tenants. Contact us online or at 540-998-6917 today to learn more.