Becoming a landlord will keep you busy, so regardless of how hard you strive to stay on top of everything, problems might still arise. Ensuring that any rental complaints are handled properly can go a long way toward reducing renters’ concerns, increasing retention rates, and establishing your image as a landlord who worries about their tenants’ well-being and security.
Tenant complaints are a source of frustration for many landlords. However, when seen in a different light, a complainant tenant is also someone who can assist you in monitoring the status of the property and alerting you to any potential concerns in or around the home.
While dealing with tenant complaints is a responsibility that all landlords should bear, using it in a timely and professional manner allows you to handle tenants’ expectations, alleviate their concerns and demonstrate your care for the property. Together in an ideal sense, how efficiently you address typical tenant concerns may enhance tenant retention, raise tenant happiness, and make property upkeep simpler and better.
So, next time, before you look for a website to post a house for rent, make sure you know about the most common tenant complaints and how to resolve them. Let us check out some of them here –
- Issues with Maintenance and Preservation
For a good reason, maintenance concerns are the number one spot of most tenants’ complaints. All rental houses necessitate regular maintenance, and if it is not performed regularly, minor maintenance concerns can soon escalate into major repair difficulties.
The landlords need to have a clear procedure to fix the issue and deal with it while it is still meager. You may include this method in your lease agreement form to ensure that the tenants know it. It is better to ensure that the tenants make maintenance requests in writing since this gives you time to analyze the problem, come up with a solution and respond accordingly. It also enables you to document each complaint, making tracking them for associated expenses and future references easier.
- Communication Gap
Another common issue tenants face is a lack of communication with the landlord. Renting from someone who never answers the phone or emails or appears to be unavailable all of the time may be quite annoying for the tenants. Frequently delaying or neglecting to answer calls may significantly influence tenant retention since they will quickly lose trust in the landlord.
Therefore, it is advisable to respond to your tenants swiftly and address their complaints at the earliest. You can make the best use of technology and set up an answering machine or an email correspondence form for tenants so that their complaints can be recorded easily and you can respond to them timely. Also, remember that if you haven’t heard from your tenant for some weeks, it is better to contact them voluntarily and inquire about how they have been keeping.
- Insect infestation Issues
Tenants will most likely contact you to complain about the bugs! Yes, you must ensure that pest invasion is rapidly becoming a significant health and safety concern. When a tenant approaches you to complain about this, you must reply swiftly and schedule an appointment with a professional exterminator. You can also prevent this common issue entirely by regularly inspecting and treating your rental property for insects and other common pests.
- Unpleasant Neighbors
Tenants frequently complain about something that landlords cannot always control. This is challenging to resolve because you have little influence over who lives near your rental property or across the street. However, there are several actions you can take to remedy the issue. First, you may identify and interact with the neighbors to learn if they are good. If the tenant has made a complaint against any neighbor, you should first communicate the same to the latter and discuss it.
If discussing the concerning problem with the neighbor doesn’t yield fruitful results, there are other actions that you can take to resolve it. Suppose the problem is that your neighbor has loud sound systems creating excessive noise. In that case, you can consider adding insulation to external walls, changing doors with noise options, or planting vegetation along the side of the home or yard. The last option to solve such problems should be to complain to the local police authority when the trivial issue takes the shape of a tort or crime.
Managing Tenant Complaints
There are several effective strategies to handle your tenants’ concerns and ensure that the issue is addressed quickly and competently. Note all these points before you check for a good website to post a house for rent and look forward to renting your house to someone. The most common yet effective ways to handle tenants’ complaints include –
1. Never dismiss a complaint
If you receive a written complaint from your tenant, inform him that you have received the complaint and that you’ll take appropriate action at the earliest. It is not a good idea to dismiss the complaint and assume that the tenant will handle the problem through his means.
2. Pose many questions
Learn as much as you can about your tenant’s problems related to the rental property. This will help in coming up with accurate and effective solutions.
3. Show empathy
The best way to solve others’ problems is by putting yourself in their shoes and then analyzing the situation. In the same way, it is important to show empathy towards the tenants while they are complaining. This would help you as a landlord grasp a better understanding of the problem and quickly reach an effective solution.
Simply looking for a suitable tenant for a rental house doesn’t end the work of a landlord. The process of granting a rental property for rent to a tenant involves regular inspections, communications, complaint resolutions, etc. So, next time before you post free ads for room rent and welcome a new tenant to your rental house, remember to keep the points mentioned above in mind.
