There’s nothing worse for a landlord than having the relationship with a tenant turn sour. This undoubtedly leads to unnecessary stress and headaches during a shorthold tenancy, especially when it comes to the check-out process and handing over the deposit.
LetBritain is an online rental agent that has been working with landlords to ensure a good return on their investment, through let online services to help them manage their properties with ease. For many years, we have been working with tenants, so you can trust us to understand the importance of maintaining a good relationship with your tenants.
However, this can become difficult when the relationship with tenants goes awry, so to help provide some useful solutions for this kind of situation, we’ve created a handy guide to help landlords effectively manage the relationship with their tenants without ruffling any feathers.
Read on to find out how you too can keep the peace and get along with your tenants during their statutory periodic tenancy.
At the end of the day, your tenants are paying you for the use of your investment property. Naturally, they will expect to be treated as a paying customer by their prospective landlords for the service they are providing. However, this also doesn’t mean that they own your home, so striking a balance between this is the key to a starting off a good tenant-landlord relationship.
Take advantage of the tenancy agreement and outline a set of conditions that you will observe in order to uphold your end of the bargain. You will also need to ensure that you have detailed what you expect from your tenants in return, so there is no room for grey-areas and uncertainty.
This will help you establish a fair relationship with your tenants at the start of a statutory periodic tenancy, so that should something go wrong, you’ve got a written document that you can refer back to in order to resolve any disputes.
Tenants are temporary owners and occupiers of your property. Unless you’re a live-in landlord or you’re living in the same building, then you will need to maintain your distance as a landlord and give them privacy whilst they are renting your property. If you intrude on their personal space or time without warning, then you could be at risk of seriously jeopardising your relationship with your tenants.
Yes, you will need to conduct inspections of your property, but there is a way you can do so without infringing on your tenant’s privacy in the process. Consider creating an inspection calendar and share this with your tenant, making sure to communicate this with them well in advance, so that they have time to prepare prior to an inspection.
Tenants hate an impromptu knock at the door from their landlord, so by taking their privacy and time into consideration, you’ll be able to build a stronger relationship built on trust and respect.
One of the major bug-bears that tenants have when it comes to their relationship with their landlords, is when they drag their feet when arranging for repairs or maintenance work to be carried out. There’s nothing worse than being left inconvenienced without hot water or central heating, especially in the winter months or having to deal with a constantly dripping ceiling or faulty appliance for weeks on end.
So, try to put yourself in your tenant’s shoes and imagine how frustrating you would find it if there was a problem with your property and you weren’t able to arrange a repair for it yourself.
Tenants will respect a landlord much more when they can see they are proactively looking after their property and treat it well. Believe us when we say, landlord-tenant relationships quickly turn sour if you drag your heels when it comes to paying out for a repair or arranging for any necessary maintenance and upkeep work to be completed.
LetBritain, the online letting agents, can help landlords manage their property investments with a range of packages and services. These include tenant reference checks, statutory periodic tenancy administration, helping you work out what is a good rental yield and more, as well as liaising with tenants.
Contact us to today to find out how we can help you manage your property and tenants!