My main squeeze, Earl, has owned a variety of rental properties through the years. And he’s learned a thing or two about managing them. So if there is anybody out there thinking of becoming a landlord, listen up!
It seems to be the nature of the beast that if something will go wrong it will go wrong on a Saturday night or a holiday weekend just as Earl and I are stepping out to some dinner party or family gathering. The phone rings. It is the tenant in apartment #3F. Her key has broken off in her lock and she doesn’t know what to do. Or it’s the tenant in apartment 205 whose air conditioner is on the fritz and it’s over ninety-five degrees.
Rule Number One regarding tenants is that you can expect them to require attention at the most inopportune time. And you’d better be ready to respond.
Rule Number Two is that tenants don’t have the same agenda as you do. Even if they pay their rent on time every month, it’s about maximizing what they get for their dollars. As a landlord, it’s about keeping them happy without spending more than is necessary. For instance, in one of Earl’s properties, he installed a free washer and dryer for his tenants. He even pays the water bill.
Earl’s agenda in providing this service is to keep his tenants happy and staying put. He reasons that if they get an added perk, like free laundry, they will be less likely to move. Because when they move, it costs him money. The tenants’ agenda, however, is to assume that free laundry is a given and that they are entitled to it. Just as they feel they are entitled to two parking spaces per unit when their leases say they are entitled to one. It’s a push me/pull you scenario.
Conscientious landlords seek to improve their properties; conscientious tenants work to help them. But most tenants simply take the improvements as entitlements and may or may not keep them up.
So Rule Number Three, and maybe this is really the most important rule, is that landlords had better be savvy about the properties they purchase in the first place because that can make all the difference in their profitability. It also makes it worth the hassle when the telephone rings just as we’re going to dinner any Saturday night.
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