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Tenants are crucial to maintaining cash flow, but some property managers make basic mistakes that cause them to move on.
Let’s Rent managing director Lisa Indge said there’s a price to be paid for treating tenants poorly.
“Happy tenants communicate with their property manager and allow access for routine inspections, repairs and also to re-let the property,” she said.
National property management trainer and consultant Darren Hunter said PMs sometimes fail to realise that both landlords and tenants need to be treated professionally.
Here are the top three complaints they hear from tenants.
1.Disrespectful treatment
Mr Hunter said the PM industry has a culture where landlords are number one and tenants are number two.
“In a way, of course, we do need to work in the landlord’s best interest, but it doesn’t automatically mean we treat the tenant as second best,” he told Residential Property Manager.
“The tenants of today are not the tenants of 20 years ago, where tenants only rented because they couldn’t afford to buy. People rent now for all sorts of reasons.”
2.Bad handling of maintenance and repairs
Ms Indge said it's a property manager's job to ensure maintenance requests are processed quickly and in line with instructions.
“The reality is that these requests are often ignored or take far too long to be actioned,” she said.
“When choosing a property manager, landlords should ask what their maintenance procedure is, including expected timings for repairs to be completed.”
3.No written feedback
Mr Hunter said he very commonly finds that PMs will not leave written feedback for a tenant after a routine inspection.
“So the tenants have no feedback at all, not even a thank you, and so inadvertently the tenant now has a chip on their shoulder against the PM, and the PM did not even realise,” he said.
“Written feedback is so important, just even if you give them some appreciation by leaving a little bag of jelly beans, or a chocolate frog as a thank you.
"It just extends the good will in that relationship."
Ms Indge's blog post originally appeared as '5 things that annoy your tenants' on Smart Property Investment.
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