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How to Communicate Effectively with Your Washington Corridor Tenants

Couple Discussing Lease Agreement with LandlordEffective tenant communication is definitely the cornerstone of owning successful rental properties in the Washington Corridor. But in reality, for most investors, effective communication is a skill that takes time and effort to develop. The good news is that you can learn this ability and that many experts in the industry will be able to help provide you with guidance. Communicating with a tenant might be a unique challenge, as such, it is important to understand the specific elements that can surely help improve your process.

Communicating effectively with your tenants starts with the very first interaction – often a screening phone call. Once prospective tenants call about a property, it is significant to describe your screening criteria in a clear but friendly way. This can be of service to you not only to get a sense of who your potential tenant might be but likewise to start to establish expectations in terms of the landlord-tenant relationship.

By the time a tenant has wrapped up the screening process, another key aspect of effective communication is going through the lease documents. Your lease documents are more than just a legal contract. They need to very clearly outline the responsibilities for both you and your tenants, involving things like landscaping maintenance, parking, and pets, to point out a few. Your lease should also detail how you will handle future communication. It’s a brilliant idea to start early and encourage your tenant to communicate with you regularly. This is something that’s made much easier with software, apps, and online tenant portals. By way of ensuring that your tenant clearly understands the lease documents and bestowing them a chance to ask questions, you can, to a large extent, encourage them to take their responsibilities way more seriously.

Effective tenant communication doesn’t end when your tenant moves in, however. To regularly keep the lines of communication open, you have to establish a set of guidelines for how and when regular communication will take place. As an illustration, your lease needs to bestow specific information relating to how much notice you will provide tenants with before entering the property or performing routine maintenance. Oftentimes, this timeframe is specified in state or local landlord laws, nonetheless, you can as well increase the timetable as a show of goodwill. A lot of experts suggest providing one week’s advance notice before routine maintenance may perhaps be done and delivering that notice in more than one format (a phone call and an email, by way of illustration ).

In the case of an emergency, effective communication takes on a new urgency. As a property owner, it is imperative to ensure that your tenants can contact you in the event of a serious problem with the property. It is furthermore vital that your response is both prompt and proactive. You ought to address emergency repair requests as soon as possible, but no later than a few hours whenever the tenant contacts you. It is even crucial 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 securing that the lines of communication stay open, you can boost your tenant’s trust and encourage them to share better information regarding the condition of the property throughout their tenancy.

Finally, don’t forget to practice the golden rule in your communications and relationship, as a whole, 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. Certainly, hiring a trustworthy Washington Corridor property manager is also a great way to ensure clear and effective communication with all your tenants. Contact us online or at 832-449-5263 today to learn more.

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