Communication Tips for Your Orange County FL Investment Property
The key to having a successful rental experience is to ensure communication is open, transparent, and responsive. If you’re working with a professional property management company, you should expect to receive consistent updates about your property, including accounting statements and reports. You also want to be sure your property managers are communicating properly with your tenants and responding to their needs.
If you’re managing on your own, it’s especially critical that you communicate well with your tenants, vendors, and anyone else who works on your property or with your tenants. At Park Avenue Property Management, we value communication and we’re sharing some tips on how to achieve it.
Discuss Expectations and Responsibilities
Before your tenants move into the property, talk about how communication will work. You’ll want to make sure they have your contact information and know how to reach you if there’s a maintenance emergency or any other catastrophe at the property. Discuss how and when rent will be paid and what kind of communication they can expect from you if it’s late. When you need to schedule maintenance and routine repairs, explain to your tenants that they’ll need to work with you when vendors and contractors need to get into the home.
When you have a candid in-person discussion before the beginning of the lease, you can lay the groundwork of a respectful and professional relationship and ensure communication will not be a problem.
Be Available Digitally and In-Person
Modern tenants prefer digital and electronic communication more and more. They’d rather text you than call you on the phone, and sending an email is a lot easier than scheduling a meeting. Make sure you’re prepared to communicate in those ways. Some tenants might prefer the in-person communication methods, and you’ll need to be willing to work with them as well. Stay open and flexible when it comes to communication. If you’re willing to communicate in ways that work for your tenants, they’ll be more likely to talk to you when there’s something wrong.
One of the benefits to working with a professional management company is that most of us have online portals where tenants and owners can share messages with us, ask questions, or follow up on things that need to be paid, completed, or signed. Technology makes our communication process a lot easier and far more efficient for all parties.
Communicate Proactively and Follow Up
When you’re leasing out a vacant property, you need to be willing and prepared to communicate immediately and follow up with prospective tenants. If you don’t answer calls and you don’t schedule showings, you’ll lose a lot of money on vacancy. Once you have a tenant in place, you need to follow up with that tenant on things like maintenance issues and questions they may have asked you. Check in once in a while to make sure there’s nothing you can do to increase their satisfaction with the property. This will strengthen your relationship and lead to better tenant retention, which is more money in your pocket.
If you have any questions about communicating with tenants or property managers, please contact us at Park Avenue Property Management.