Management is more important for the small landlord than it is for General Motors, because the small landlord is not likely to get a government bailout if he does it wrong.
When we set out to discover the best ways to rent houses fast and for more money we found that a lot of what is required has been practiced by some landlords for a long time. Treating tenants like valued clients, like assets.
Other landlords have not followed this modern thinking and we believe they will continue to suffer as the Internet with social media makes knowledge about almost everything universally available.
Tenant management is crucial. We touched on this in another article in the series of how to rent houses faster for more money in the installment called Never Argue. Closely related is the concept of Take Responsibility and Ask Forgiveness. What do I mean? Imagine the phone is ringing.
“You cashed my check and I told you not to deposit it until the sixth,” screamed the phone with the voice provided by a new tenant with super healthy loud talking genes.
Usual way: “I did not. I always cash checks as soon as I get them. You know that. You never asked me to hold the check.” The excuses could go on and on and the tenant and you can go back and forth as to who is wrong.
Better way: “I deposited your check, a bunch of your checks bounced and I understand you are really mad. Can you forgive me?”
Well no other checks bounced, but they might have.”
“Absolutely they might have and they might next time. Can You Forgive me?” You will find that even the biggest jerk will probably forgive you and the action of forgiving you defuses anger pretty fast.
Not suggesting you admit to doing something evil designed to ruin their lives forever, but for minor inconsequential issues, take responsibility for what you did and ask forgiveness.
Initially I get some resistance to this approach from landlords who say something like “George, he never told me to hold the check so why should I do what you call taking responsibility?”
The answer is that you want the issue resolved quickly to the benefit of your blood pressure and tenant tranquility. You know going back and forth will most likely result in louder and louder exchanges.
But imagine that there had been some checks bounce with related fees involved. What do you do then?
The same thing you would have done before reading this article. The answer is not so much who is wrong as it is a business decision based on your analysis of future events if you do or do not pay some or all of the bank fees the tenant incurred.
One fact is clear. You did deposit the check. One fact is not clear. Did he ask you to hold the check? In my opinion the landlord has no obligation to hold a check and should never do so for a lot of reasons. One more clear fact. He gave you a check without sufficient funds if other checks did bounced.
Whatever your decision about bounced checks, taking responsibility and asking forgiveness will work much better than arguing and will continue to help you rent houses faster and for more money.
Author Resource:
George Beardsley has written extensively about finance and business starting as a financial reporter for the Chicago Tribune and was an editor for the publishing firm Dow-Jones, Irwin and is now a landlord in Florida. He has just published a new eBook called “911 for Landlords” available at http://www.911forlandlords.com with the information he learned during the last two years which has reduced his vacancies rates from 20 per cent to often zero.
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