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Tenant Inspection Tours
By arlene | February 4, 2008
One of the best techniques for heading off potential maintenance, repair, and even decorating complaints is to do a complete walk- through of the property with your tenants. Make this an inspection tour and make sure that you express it that way to the tenants. Look at everything. Make notes (or use your own inspection form) on anything that needs to be repaired or replaced.
Once you’ve completed the tour, ask if the tenant is satisfied. Get specific. Naturally, you don’t have to repaint the walls just to please the vanity of a tenant, but if those walls really do need painting, agree to do so and place a timeframe on keeping that promise. Have the tenant sign the form. Keep a copy for yourself and give one to the tenant.
Some landlords take a photograph of each room during the inspection. Others have even been known to conduct the tour with a hand-held videotape recorder. Consider having the tenants pose in one of the shots. This provides proof that the photos were reallytaken at the time of the tour. Cameras, film, and even those film/ camera kits are so inexpensive these days that this is a very cheap way to protect your assets.
Sign the Lease
When you finally find an applicant who you believe will make a good tenant, you will need to sign a lease. A written lease should protect the rights of both parties. The owner provides a safe and sound living space for which the tenant pays a fair market value. If bothuphold their part of the agreement, everybody wins.
Be sure to have an experienced person review the lease with you. All kinds of obligations could be hidden in the document. These things can turn into destructive “land mines” during the term of the lease. One more piece of advice: Never deposit a tenant’s security or cleaning deposit without a signed lease. To do so begins a lease by implication.
A Month-to-Month Lease
Most often, residential properties are rented under a one-year lease, but some landlords do offer month-to-month leasing terms to their tenants. With a month-to-month lease, the tenant can, at any time, give notice the he or she is leaving. Tenants love this agreement because it offers them more freedom of action. Avoiding the month-to-month lease often sways the rights more in favor of the property owner. You may have very little notice at all that you now have a vacant apartment on your hands.
Nevertheless, some landlords actually prefer the month-tomonth leases. Because the lease works both ways, it also allows the landlord to terminate the lease at the end of each month, and landlords like the ability to give their tenants immediate notice that it’s time to move out. If the owner is planning a change, say to convert the apartment into condominiums, he or she may not want to wait six months or a year for all the leases to come to an end.
However, even with the month-to-month leasing terms, the owner still has to be aware of the tenant’s rights. The city will probably frown on a landlord putting people out on the street in the middle of a winter snowstorm. That being said, the month-to-month lease certainly gives that owner a lot of flexibility in planning the conversion to condos.
Negotiating Lease Renewals
Here is what you should keep in mind for the future, when the lease you have just signed has expired and is up for renewal. Lease renewals at higher rates or longer time periods aren’t automatic. This is especially true when dealing with good tenants.
Many factors must be weighed. If your local economy is strong and growing, and demand for good housing is high, you might have no trouble at all asking for higher rent. If, on the other hand, the economy is on the downslide, you will probably be much more willing to negotiate just to keep your property occupied.
Renewing a lease provides each side of the negotiation with a comfort factor and that’s good. The tenant knows the landlord as someone who takes care of the property and the tenant’s needs. The landlord knows the tenant as someone who respects the property and makes his payments on time. A comfort factor can contribute significantly to a successful negotiation.
Lease renewal negotiations generally revolve around threeelements:
- A landlord will want to extend the length of the lease, while the tenant will most likely want to keeps his or her options open and will push for the same lease length or for going on a month-to-month basis.
- The landlord will want a rent increase, but the tenant will want to keep the monthly rate the same or to reduce the amount of the proposed increase.
- The property may be in need of maintenance or repairs, and the tenant may use this as a bargaining chip.
- Consider each point carefully, and negotiate in good faith. Remember, good tenants are worth their weight in gold.
Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Tenant Inspection Tours
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- Lease Termination
- Tenant Selection
- Legal Issues Related to Eviction
- Methods of Using Leases To Acquire And Finance Real Estate (1-3)
- Commonly Used Leases
- Entry Rights to Your Property
- Get Leasing Principles Work
Topics: Form, Land, Market, Property, Rental, Residential |
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