Being a good landlord is crucial to your rental property business. It influences your tenant turnover, attracts and retains tenants, and most importantly, it builds a long-lasting landlord-tenant relationship.
Here are the traits and qualities that tenants look for in a landlord:
-
Professional
First and foremost, a landlord should be professional at all times. Professionalism includes your attitude, behavior, punctuality, actions, and even the way you promote yourself. A good landlord also doesn’t try to interfere in the tenant’s life or get too personal.
-
Well-organized
Being well-organized is an important quality that any landlord should have. Since landlords deal with a lot of paperwork, it’s easy to get disorganized and misplace important documents.
Stay organized by having a proper folder, cabinet, or drawer for all real estate-related documents. It’s best to have a system for your files, folders, and documents. You can even go paperless by storing all your documents on your computer.
-
Available, reliable, and trustworthy
A good landlord should always be ready to handle any problems or issues encountered by the tenant. If your tenant reports any repairs needed in the property, it’s your responsibility to inspect the property’s condition and state of repair right away.
Reliability and trustworthiness are also important traits of ideal landlords. Tenants need to believe that you’ll do what you say, whether it’s promising to repair a certain issue in the property or just responding to calls and concerns in a timely fashion.
-
Maintaining the rental property
As part of the landlord-tenant law, landlords are required to keep the property well-maintained and to make the necessary repairs. Whether it’s a residential property or a commercial one, they must be in a habitable condition. A good landlord also needs to make sure that the plumbing, electricity, gas, and air-conditioning are running efficiently and safely.
-
Excellent communication skills
Communication is key to a successful landlord-tenant relationship. By giving your business number or work email address, tenants will feel at ease knowing that they can easily get in touch with you to answer their questions or discuss any problems.
It also helps to know your tenant’s preferred means of communication. Are they more comfortable talking through a text or email? Or would they rather make a phone call?
-
Transparent
Tenants appreciate it when their landlords are transparent with them. Letting the tenant know about issues like poor cell reception inside the property or being upfront with rental details helps in creating a positive landlord-tenant relationship.
-
Flexible
While being a flexible landlord doesn’t mean allowing your tenants to pay their rents past the due date, it helps to be understanding in the event of an emergency (like hospitalization). If the rental payment is due at a certain hour of the day and the tenant can’t pay at that moment, the landlord should be understanding enough to adjust the payment date to a later one.
If you’re looking for warehouse space for rent in St. Louis, the Cardinal Realty Group is the team to call. Contact them today at 636.225.0385 or send them an email at Hal(at)CardinalRealtyGroup(dotted)com.