There's more to being a landlord than simply collecting rent money every month. It's important to provide a clean and safe dwelling in which someone from your community can call home.
This means being responsible for repairs, being in contact with the tenants, and more. With all the responsibilities and complexities that entails, it's nice to have some good advice to fall back.
Lean on Professionals
It's possible to find a rental agency in your city that has experienced realtors at the helm delivering property management services that can really help landlords. These professionals can give as much or as little assistance as is required, which may be very useful for smaller landlords renting out a condo unit or a few units in one building.
Perhaps you only need help vetting tenants, to make sure that yours is the right fit. But if you need it, these agencies can deliver a turnkey solution covering all a landlord's responsibilities.
From day-to-day operations, handling all rent cheques, processing repair requests, showing and marketing the units, getting help from a professional can really make the scope of your job more manageable. Smaller-scale landlords may not have enough experience to draw back on, and they may not know what they don't know.
Having an experienced professional give you support where it's needed will make your job much easier, and everything will go smoother for you and your tenant.
Be Available
Wanting a great tenant is a two-way street: how can you expect your tenant to respectfully fulfill their obligations if you don't fulfill yours as a landlord? There are legal obligations you need to meet, pertaining to things like fire codes, but you shouldn't strive to do just the bare minimum.
If you address their concerns promptly and take them seriously, you'll both enjoy a better mutual relationship. Trying to cut corners with repairs or dawdling could make a decent tenant less loyal, so be available to fix their problems, or at least communicate.
Find the Right Match
The tenant who will pay you the most money each month is not necessarily the right tenant. It's better to rent the apartment for a little bit less each month to a low-maintenance tenant than jump through hoops to make a little more each month.
Don't be afraid to ask prospective tenants to describe themselves, what they do for a living, what their habits are like at home. This will tell you important information directly, and indirectly, you can get a sense of who this person is by the way they speak or write.
Finding the right match is all about making sure there's a solid connection.
Rental markets everywhere are experiencing dramatic changes, so it's more important than ever to lean on experienced professionals for help, respond quickly to your tenants' needs, and do the initial work to connect with the right tenant in the first place. Follow this advice, and you should have a long-term tenant secured sooner than later.
