Tenant contact, how do I keep in touch with my renters?
This is a pretty big part of being a property owner. Do it right and everything is fine, get it wrong and it might get super annoying..
I have renters in both Sweden and USA with four different setups for dealing with them. A hired real estate agent as my property manager, tenant as a property manager, I manage a few apartments myself and I have my girlfriend/ partner and her mum to manage one.
The hired property manager is awesome and I’m happy about having her here in Florida, where rules are weird and people usually pay with checks. She has to go pick the rent up. She will take care of all smaller stuff and then double check with us before making any bigger investments. She finds new tenants if someone moves out and she evicts people if they miss behave. The drawback with a hired property manager like this is the cost. We pay half of the first months rent and then 6% of our annual rental income.
One of my apartment houses in Sweden has a restaurant on the bottom floor. The owner of the restaurant used to be the owner of the house. I bought the house from him just before I was about to leave for over here. As I knew I wouldn’t be around I decided to make him property manager as a part of the deal and it seems to work great. He knows the house inside out and also has a good relationship with all the tenants. The same should be very doable with any renter. Give them a reduced rent to take care of this or that.
The tenant conatact I manage myself is with single ladies in their 60’s. They live in my newly restored apartment house and take good care of the place themselves. If there are any issues they let me know through a text message and I send the right guy to fix it. Works great! I love keeping everything in text as it eliminates the risk of misunderstandings, etc. You also avoid saying things you haven’t thought through etc. I usually have my dad or brother helping me with this place when I’m not in Sweden.
My final way of tenant contact is similar to the one above. Me or my friend/ partner/ girlfriend here in Florida takes care of an older renter. He is very independent an pays rent through transfer. Unusual for here. If he needs anything while we are not around, my friend’s mother will take care of it for us.
How about that for tenant contact? If you want more on the subject, READ THIS
And if you have renters, DO THIS
