As a landlord, you are a property manager. That is to say, that you have already gone through the stage of becoming a property manager and are now in the position of residential property management. As a property manager, you’re number one goal should be ensuring that you are taking care of your property — further increasing its value and assuring that your tenants are pleased with their experience on your property.
Yet how can you, as a property manager, improve property management? In what ways can you ask yourself how to grow your property management business? Furthermore, how can you better your property management branding? The best ways to do so are by word of mouth, whether communicating with your tenants or through having them recommend your business to others.
The residential property business, as of 2015, had grown to a worth of over $39 billion nationally (that’s a lot of competition). With renting becoming more popular nowadays, with 71% of millennials opting to rent rather than buy, there are a lot of property managers beginning to flood the market. Similarly, with only 4.3% of single family renters vacating their properties at the beginning of the annual quarter, there is little rental turnover, meaning that landlords and property management companies are doing something right to continue securing their business and tenancy. For you, as a property manager, you want to ensure that you are consistently taking steps to improve property management practices and keep your tenants happy, all the while attracting new clients.
What is one of the easiest ways to do this? As we mentioned above, it’s through communication. Staying in touch with your tenants and prospective renters is simple, surefire way to ensure that you are keeping their attention and showing that you care. By utilizing these simple methods you can show that you are interested in their well-being, self-interests, and business, further working to improve property management.
- Digital Communication:Emails and social media are an easy way to stay in-touch with tenants and prospective clients. Not only can you use these outlets to advertise property, but you can use it for direct, fast, casual communication that allows for information to be traded at a high-rate of speed,
no matter the location in which the two of you are located. You can send contracts for signature across email, can allow for inquiries through Facebook, and more, giving tenants and prospects a variety of methods to contact you, thus to improve property management methods for the future. - Phone Communication:A classic means of staying open and available, keeping your phone on you at all times can help to keep yourself in touch with tenants and prospects with great ease.
If a tenant is having a mechanical issue with the apartment or needs to ask you a question about utilities or rent, the two of you can easily communicate across the phone. Similarly, prospective tenants can contact you by phone, asking you questions about the apartment and seeking to set-up a future appointment, something that will impress upon them your availability all the while working to improve property management tactics. - Face-to-Face Communication:The age-old method of communication, face-to-face interactions allow for the simplest means of interaction with tenants and prospective clients, the simplest manner to ensure you improve property management actions. Rather than delegating all of your property management tasks to others, consider visiting your properties often, so that you might see your tenants face-to-face and discuss any issues that might be at-hand, receiving feedback on your role and the property. Likewise, showing a prospective around an apartment face-to-face will allow them to get an understanding of who you are, as well as what future interactions might be like.
