How to be a better landlord

With demand for rental properties on the up, being a landlord is currently a very lucrative position to be in. With that being said, this is no excuse to not deliver the best service possible to your tenants.

Being a good landlord is not just beneficial to your tenants but will also benefit you directly, as your properties are likely to be better looked after and people will want to stay longer meaning you have less time with properties sitting empty.

Here are just some of the ways you can be a better landlord:

Be contactable

Being a landlord can be a 24/7 job, property emergencies can happen and unfortunately, they aren’t always between the hours of 9-5 or on a weekday. Therefore, your tenants need to be able to contact you easily and you need to be responsive to this.

Consider investing in some business cards to give to your tenants and keep at your properties. These should include several methods of contacting you for ease. You could even state your preferences for being contacted, for example ‘please email between 9-5, for emergencies please call me’. This way your tenants will feel confident that they can approach you and you can relax knowing that they have ways to do so should they need to.

Be sympathetic

When dealing with a rental property it is easy to feel removed from it, particularly if you own and manage several. This is natural to you that the properties are business and not personal homes. Despite this, it is important that you remain sympathetic to your tenants and solve problems how you would want them to be solved if they were your own home.

For example, if your shower broke at home, you would unlikely wait weeks to fix it but would get someone out as soon as possible. This same responsiveness should be shown to your tenants.

If you struggle to respond to issues quickly due to other commitments, consider providing tenants with contact details for a trusted tradesperson who can help immediately in emergency situations when required.

Being sympathetic also means providing close attention to detail within your properties. It isn’t enough to just solve the big problems such as broken boilers or damaged furniture; you should also pay close attention to smaller details such as faded paint. Doing the things that really matter to your tenants will also help you to get better reviews online. To learn how to get great tenant reviews on your property, you need to learn to do the little things well and the big things quickly.

Be organised

Whether you own one property or one hundred properties, as a landlord you need to be highly organised. It is vital that you treat your responsibility as a landlord as a business rather than something on the side. Although it may be a side hustle for you, for your tenants you are responsible for their current home, so it is important that you have everything under control from appropriate insurance to quick response times.