How to Keep Your Phoenix Tenants
When you have high-quality tenants in your rental property, you can expect your rental to be well cared for. You can expect the rent to be paid on time every month. And if you’re lucky, you can also expect a lease renewal to be signed at the end of the lease term – if your tenants enjoy leasing from you.
As a Phoenix, AZ landlord, it’s important you don’t take for granted the top-notch tenants you have. After all, vacant rentals can ruin your annual profits, and placing a new tenant can be a time-consuming process. But knowing how to retain tenants in Phoenix is not always as easy as it seems. That’s why today we’re sharing the best ways to keep Phoenix tenants.
How to Keep Your Tenants Happy
1. Be Friendly
Customer service is something all tenants look for when leasing a Phoenix rental. Whether you self-manage your property or enlist the help of a professional property management company, the connection that’s built must be strong.
Here are some great ways you can forge a strong, professional relationship with your tenants:
- Meet with your tenants face-to-face on move-in day to welcome them to your property
- Routinely check in with your tenants to ensure their happy and don’t have any issues
- Perform all seasonal inspections and make sure to chit-chat with your tenants too
- Attend maintenance and repair calls with your crew to ensure the quality meets your expectations
- Remember the small things like the names of your tenants, their family, and even their pets
2. Offer a Rent Discount
Sometimes all it takes to convince a tenant to stay is a rent discount. After all, everyone loves to save money.
Changing things up and offering a rent discount, even as small as a percentage off one month’s rent, might be just what you need to secure a lease renewal.
3. Set Up a Referral Program
When you have good tenants, you not only want to keep them, you want to attract more tenants that are just like them. A great way to encourage tenants to stay with you is to set up a referral program. This not only benefits your tenants, but your business as a landlord too.
Offer existing tenants an incentive for referring friends, co-workers, and even family members that would be interested in leasing one of your Phoenix properties. Incentives might include gift cards to local merchants, rent discounts, cash-in-hand, and much more.
4. Respect Your Tenant’s Privacy
Routinely checking in on your rental property is a good thing. You want to make sure nothing is being damaged and that your tenants are happy. But bugging your tenants too often is one of the easiest ways to send them packing at the end of their lease term.
Make sure you never show up to your Phoenix rental unannounced unless it’s an emergency. In addition, whether your state requires written notice to stop by, do it anyways. This courtesy gives your tenants time to prepare for your visit. Plus, it shows them you care about them and understand that your rental is their private home.
5. Be Proactive About Maintenance and Repairs
One common complaint tenants have about their landlords is that they are not timely when it comes to handling maintenance and repair requests. If your tenants don’t feel you prioritize their needs, they are sure to want to find somewhere else to live.
If you want to avoid this, and retain tenants in Phoenix, follow these best practices:
- Provide your tenants easy ways to submit a maintenance or repair request (e.g., online portal, text, phone, or email)
- Give tenants a way to provide images of the issue at the time the request is made
- Write out the steps needed to make a maintenance request in the lease agreement
- Follow up with your tenants after the request is fulfilled to ensure satisfaction
6. Think Before Raising the Rent
It’s tempting to want to raise the rent every lease renewal so you can make more money. After all, you’re in the business of generating revenue from your rental property. That said, if you don’t raise the rent each year you may not make as much as you’d like, but it sure will be more than if your tenants decide to leave your property vacant.
7. Send Rent Payment Reminders
Your tenants have a lot to remember. Make it easy on them to pay their rent by sending them courtesy rent payment reminders. This may be in the form of emails, text messages, or even phone calls. On top of this, you might even consider giving your best tenants a break if they pay a little late one time. Waiving the late fee shouldn’t be a regular thing, but every now and then even the best tenants make a mistake.
8. Make Energy Efficient Upgrades
One thing tenants are definitely looking for more now than ever is energy-efficient rentals. They are good for the environment, save your tenants money, and make you look better as a landlord. If you have an excellent tenant in your property, and a lease renewal is on the horizon, consider making a small upgrade that is energy efficient. For example, adding an energy-efficient appliance, low-flow toilet, or a programmable thermostat has the potential to help you keep Phoenix tenants leasing from you.
9. Perform Proper Tenant Screening
If you’re looking to retain Phoenix tenants, one of the best places to start is at the beginning. Proper tenant screening will help you weed out tenants not likely to stay with you beyond one lease term. However, with a solid screening process in place, you’ll be able to find tenants that are willing to settle for a while in a rental, should the experience be a good one.
10. Be Flexible with Temporary Alterations
Just because someone is leasing a property doesn’t mean they don’t want it to feel like home. For those tenants that you’ve come to know and love, consider being flexible when it comes to some of the lease provisions.
Here are some of the things tenants like to change that won’t matter too much should they ever decide to leave:
- Paint colors
- Minor landscaping
- Light fixtures
- Door locks
- Appliances
- Security system (installation)
Allowing your tenants to make these small changes might make them feel more like home and want to stay another lease term.
11. Provide Access to a Website
Whether you start your own, or rely on the one your property management company has, giving your tenants access to a rental-related website offer tenants the following benefits:
- Ability to pay rent online through a portal
- Easy access to a maintenance and request form
- Blog content with helpful tips and tricks
- Access to housing market information
- Information about community events
If you give your tenants access to a valuable resource like a website, you have the potential to boost their interest in living in your rental and staying long term.
12. Develop a Sense of Community
Oftentimes tenants do not ever feel like part of the community since they’re on the move so much. They never put down roots, engage with the neighbors, or call their rental home. However, you can change that. Try hosting a monthly barbecue, seminar, or kid-friendly ice cream gathering to get tenants out of their homes and socializing with others in the neighborhood. This works especially well if you own a multi-family property.
13. Allow Pets in Your Rental
People love their pets as though they are members of the family. With so many people in need of pet-friendly rentals, allowing pets in your property is a great way to push ahead of the competition and encourage people to stay for more than one lease term.
14. Gather Tenant Feedback
There’s no better way to find out how you or your property manager are doing than to ask your tenants directly. More than that, after you gather feedback from your tenants, actually take into consideration what they’re asking for. You never know what minor things you might be able to change that will help you keep Phoenix tenants for another lease term.
15. Offer a Longer Lease Term
Want to keep Phoenix tenants in your property for longer? All you have to do is offer a longer lease term. A high-quality tenant that’s happy leasing from you might jump at the chance to lock in a longer lease term that will include a rent rate lock too.
16. Be Proactive About Lease Renewals
Tenants don’t want surprises. If they’re unsure about whether you’re going to offer a lease renewal, they might start looking elsewhere to live. To prevent this, reach out to tenants you like well in advance and get a feel for whether they’re thinking about staying. This proactive approach will put them at ease and help you secure another year of rent.
Boost Lease Renewals with Stratton Vantage
Keeping tenants in your Phoenix, AZ rental property doesn’t have to be hard. When you use an experienced property management company like Stratton Vantage, your tenants will feel like home and never want to leave.
If you’re in need of Phoenix property management, [cta] get a FREE rental analysis[/cta] of your property or contact us to learn more.