August 24, 2008

dealing with tenants

If you are not going to hire a property manager to handle your real estate investments, you will be taking on a lot of responsibility. And one of the biggest responsibilities is dealing with tenants. This may not be something that you think about early on when you are buying a property, but soon enough you will be faced with this situation.

When it comes to dealing with tenants, you never know what type of situation you are going to run into. There are a few common occurrences that most landlords are used to, but as you can imagine, this industry is one that never stays the same. No matter how comfortable you are with your tenants, you never know when this is going to change in the future.


Here are three common things that you will be dealing with as far as your tenants are concerned.


1. Since your tenants are paying rent, they are going to expect everything to be in good working order. If nothing ever breaks you will not have to worry about this. But guess what? The second that something goes wrong is when you will get an immediate call from your tenant. If you know what you are doing, you may be able to fix the problem on your own. But in many cases, this is something that you will have to pay for. Just make sure that you are ready to deal with this from time to time.


2. Rent is another huge sticking point when it comes to landlord – tenant relationships. The lease that your tenants sign will outline how much money they are supposed to pay as well as when they are supposed to send it to you. But as you can guess, this does not always work out easily. There are going to be times when you are less of a landlord and more of a collection agency. This can be annoying, but remember, it comes along with the territory. If you do your research before letting a tenant move in, you should be able to avoid people who are not going to pay you what they owe on time.


3. Even though you may hate to think about it, some tenants will try to take you to court if something goes wrong. This is far from common, but often times small disputes can lead to larger issues that can only be settled in court. You will want to do whatever you can to keep your tenants happy at all times. This does not mean that you should let them push you around, but a mutually beneficial relationship is very important. This will help to ensure that your problems never go beyond anything minor.


You should not let dealing with bad tenants scare you away from getting involved with investing in single family homes. When it comes down to it, most of the tenants that you lease your property to will end up working with you just fine. But of course, there are always times when this does not happen.


The way that you deal with tenants will have a lot to do with how successful your real estate properties become. Once you have one investment property in the pipeline, you will begin to gain experience with tenant relations. From there, you will not run into any issues that you cannot handle.


Overall, making sure that your tenants are happy is very important. And remember, you want to be happy yourself. When both parties are feeling good about the deal at hand, there should never be too many irresolvable issues.

No comments: