One day as I was at a rental property doing a repair a tenant had requested. I heard one of the smartest thing a person could tell a current or prospective landlord or property manager. The plumber told my mother, “Mrs. Porter if they owned his house they would live like this anyway.”
As me and my mother drove away from the property this quote seemed to be with us the whole drive. “If they owned the house they would live like that anyway.” In this article I’ll give you three tips to apply this phenomenal saying to your rental business.
3 Phenomenal Tips For Your Rental Business.
The first tip associated with this saying that resonated with my mother and myself is that some tenants just destroy and some actually take care of your home. Basically, it goes back to what or how a home is supposed to be treated. We as landlords often think when tenants punch a hole in the wall or calls us for repairs its due to a “landlord going to fix it anyway” attitude.
“Landlord going to fix it anyway” attitude is an attitude that tenants have developed that they, tenants, don’t need to maintain or keep good care of the property because it’s not their money fixing the repairs so why care about the home it’s not their home, they don’t own it. In some cases there are evil tenants out there with this attitude, but could there really be people out there that just don’t maintain their home?
The answer is yes and the opposite is true too, there are tenants that will treat your home like their own. Our job is to research, run applications, and talk to their previous landlords. We as humans are a creature of habit, a previous landlord’s experience with a tenant could be a tool used to predict how a prospective tenant will treat our property and also about good behaviors we want in a tenant and bad behaviors we are looking to avoid in a tenant
The second tip to take away from the plumber’s words is: “Don’t take this personally it’s a business.” When I walk into a house that needs make ready, I look at the repair that need to get done and I discuss the repairs needed with the maintenance crew and we attack the situation. My mother on the other hand uses various four letter words I can’t use here lol, and often says, “ I should have never rented to them, I told you Jarnell.” I often think in my head, “Well at least I don’t have to pay their deposit back.” Why worry about this now? The tenant has moved out, you need to get the home ready, and another tenant needs to move in. In no way does this mean to not report this to various credit agencies and to give them a glowing rental referral. What this mean is, “If they owned the house they would live like that anyway.”
The third and final tip I would like to leave you is to budget for the worst and accept the result. Budget your make readies like your home will look like a bomb hit it. You will be pleasantly surprised when you walk in and notice all let is needed is touch up paint here, touch up paint there, a couple of blinds, and a good cleaning of the appliances will put your property back on the market. My personal experience has shown me that if you are calm and have the situation under control your prospective tenants sense that and are more likely to rent your property. My most recent vacancy we had to do a make ready on we needed the previous tenant to move out, repairs to be made, and the previous tenants to remove items from the detached garage. The new tenants gave me the deposit and didn’t think the property would be ready by the first. When I texted the new tenants on the 26th and told them to meet me on the 27th they were surprised, had the rent for the following month, and ready to make my rental their home. Also to my surprise the new tenants had already put the lights in their name on the 26th. Always remember you got this and tenants can sense that you got this LOL!
In conclusion let’s remember our job is to get a house ready for the market, market it, rent it, and do maintenance on an as needed basis. We unfortunately can’t control the after math of a tenant once they leave the property. We can run credit checks, rental applications, talk to previous landlords, and discuss their income and work ethic with their employers and lets all we can do is our due diligence. Landlords all we can do is do our part, hope for the best, and remember, “If they owned the house they would live like that anyway.”
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