Show Appreciation for Your Tenants - They Pay Your Mortgage!

Make your Renter Feel Appreciated
The current real estate market is flooded with vacant houses for rent, so it is very important to retain a good tenant once you have one. As the rental property owner and landlord, it would be wise to show respect and appreciation for your tenant in order to retain the tenant long-term. It is much more cost effective to retain a good tenant than to try to gain a new tenant as this requires much advertising, showing the property, cleaning and preparing the property for a new tenant, preparing of paperwork, etc.

How to Show Appreciation for a New Tenant
Once the prospective renter has been approved and has signed a lease with you as the property owner, it is important to make them feel welcome. To you this might be an old rental house that you are very familiar with, but to them it is their brand new home and they are very excited about moving in. Show them around the house providing details on all of the appliances, how to shut off the water in an emergency, where the electrical breaker panel is, and any quirks there might be in the house, such as not overfilling the garbage disposal. Provide your new tenant with a contact list with your name and phone number as well as local utility and emergency telephone numbers.

Realize that moving day is a very stressful and exhausting day, particularly if there are children involved. Offer to be present on moving day to help receive deliveries and as moral support. However, do not be intrusive as some tenants will value their privacy on moving day. Instead, you may wish to stop by on moving day with a disposable Styrofoam ice chest filled with cold drinks and a basket of fruit. The following day you could bring over a welcome basket filled with the makings of one night's dinner. For example, spaghetti noodles, pasta sauce in a jar, a loaf of French bread, as they will likely still not have unpacked the kitchen items and certainly will not feel like cooking. These small gestures are not expensive but will show your new tenant that you appreciate them, and in turn they will likely desire to respect you as their landlord and pay on time and take care of your property.