Dealing With Difficult Tenants - What Do You Have To Do?
Difficult tenants can make your job as a landlord hard and problematic. And not only that! Some of those tenants tend to argue with you for every word you say even if you are perfectly reasonable. Others just don't care and cause a lot of damage to your property, and some are always late with the rent. If you have been a landlord for a long time, you definitely had at least a few tenants like these.
- Be Rational, Calm and Objective
- Keep Written Records All The Time
- Teach Tenants How They Should Treat You
- Get Tenants On Your Side
- Hire A Manager
- Ask Difficult Tenants To Leave
- The Eviction Process
Be Rational, Calm and Objective
It's normal and natural to get angry and annoyed if you are dealing with difficult tenants. Your thoughts shouldn't be clouded by emotions while you are talking with your tenants about the problems that they are causing for you. Before taking any action you should calm down, maybe even sleep on it. If you approach your tenants with anger and rage, the situation can only be worse, unfortunately. However, if you are forced to talk with your tenants immediately, you should know how to calm down in stressful situations! Take a deep breath and proceed!Keep Written Records All The Time
You should keep written records of everything in order to avoid any conflict with your tenants. This will definitely increase your workload but it will also decrease the chance for a bad tenant to try and dispute a charge with you. So, keeping written records from day one for each tenant is definitely worth it! And if you want to make one of your apartments look better, you should check these ideas for decorating a rental apartment! This can also raise the price or the monthly rent! Give it a try!
Teach Tenants How They Should Treat You
The relationship between tenant and landlord is more or less like any other relationship. Your tenants will take advantage of you if you are soft and letting them get away with everything. Your actions have to reflect on how you expect to be treated. For example, you should reprimand a tenant immediately when they get late with the rent for the first time. If you let them go away with that, they will try to do it again.Dealing With Difficult Tenants - Get Tenants On Your Side
If you show overwhelming kindness to someone, in this case, your difficult tenant, you will probably achieve a positive outcome. If you want to deal with a difficult person, you should "kill them with kindness" - some people say. This method can be quite exhausting but it can also help you win over your tenants and also build a relationship with them. You should also know what are the pros and cons of owning real estate rental property!Hire A Manager
No matter how much you try to please them, some tenants are just impossible to deal with. In these cases, you should consider hiring a property manager to handle difficult tenants for you. You will get a lot of free time and avoid stressful situations. Before you hire a good property manager you should:- Figure out what they specialize in and ask about their working experience
- Make sure that they can handle every task that you need help with
- Check for their reviews and references
Ask Difficult Tenants To Leave
When you reach the breaking point and you can not deal with the difficult tenant anymore, you should ask them to live. Getting one difficult tenant to voluntary leave can be difficult but it is not impossible. If you don't want to tell this in person, you can send them written notice to vacate. If you are lucky they will leave, but this way doesn't work every time. Want to force the tenant out? You will have to go through the costly eviction process.
The Eviction Process
The eviction process takes time and causes a lot of stress and also costs a lot. So, if you can, try to get the tenants out however you can because the eviction process is the last resort. In some places, you can evict a tenant only for these reasons:- If your tenant violated the lease terms
- Your tenant didn't move out after their lease ended
- Your tenant failed to pay their monthly rent