Communicate With Your Landlord So They Won’t Assume The Worse
Communicate with your Landlord so they won’t assume the worst when your payments aren’t made on time and they don’t hear from you or you avoid them.
We just took over the management of quite a few single-family homes with existing tenants. As communication is critical to fostering a good landlord-tenant relationship, we invested the resources into sending each new “client” a Welcome Packet that included the following:
1. An introductory letter explaining how we operate to meet their expectations and where to send their payments, who to contact about what, etc.
2. A questionnaire to confirm their contact information, the terms of their lease and inquire about any outstanding repair issues.
3. A business card to carry with them.
4. A refrigerator magnet with all our contact information.
We also emailed this information to the clients we were provided email addresses for and of course called each of them.
Now we understand that everyone have busy lives and have no time to communicate with your landlord but tenants do have contractual and financial responsibilities. Just as a tenant has the expectation that a landlord will promptly address a maintenance issue or a billing mistake, landlords expect tenants to promptly acknowledge communication efforts and rent payment issues.
Despite all our communication efforts with our new clients, few were proactive in contacting us. Most we’ve had to chase after to establish communication with them. Many that we subsequently got in touch with claimed they never got our letter or email. Several admitted getting our email, but just deleted it without reading it.
Of course, most of those we had the biggest challenges establishing communication with were behind in rent. The majority of these we didn’t hear from until we were forced to send them eviction notices.
Regardless, what did the tenants that avoided us hope to accomplish? Their avoidance of us has led to their accounts being flagged for higher scrutiny and we’re now less likely to waive late fees or grant them any other exceptions to our policies.
The tenants that didn’t respond to us until we sent them eviction notices – now all want to discuss payment plans. Why would we entertain such a request when we had to chase them so much? By avoiding to communicate with your landlord, tenants had no other option, they’ve forced us to assume we will have to go through the exact same hassle to get each payment of any payment plan we agree to. Not an appealing landlord-tenant relationship from our end, which increases the odds that we’ll just pursue the eviction option.
So, those of you reading this that are renting please note the importance of communicating with your landlord. You signed a lease, which is a contract and implicit in that contract are your responsibilities. Life happens, but If you don’t strictly abide by the terms of your lease contract it’s on you to communicate with your landlord. Otherwise, a landlord is more or less forced to assume the worst when you don’t take your contractual responsibilities seriously.
I am a realtor in Chicago, and read the article. Thank you for a great info ! – excellent !
A very useful article to both landlords and tenants. Thanks!
I have rented a 4bedroom since August 2017,I am the only name on lease therefore my companion has been contacted by landlord for all situation of my household,I made calls and left message to landlord for numerous complaints, but as soon as my companion makes a call the landlord answers her calls I have told landlord in the past that I’m the tenant and if there is any questions or concerns to contact me which tell this day the landlord has not obeyed . what do I do now I took matters in MY own hands with the process of an eviction for my situation also not knowing my detailed suggestion of this eviction ,I feel I have been neglected throughout my rent agreement.
Thank you for commenting!
We can think of a couple reasons why a landlord may choose to communicate with one tenant over another:
1) They will communicate with the tenant they can more easily get ahold of, or responds to them quicker.
2) They will choose to communicate with the tenant that uses the preferred communication channel of the landlord (i.e. – phone, text or email).
3) They will choose to communicate with the tenant that is more pleasant to communicate with.
We would suggest putting your concerns in writing to your landlord, so you have a record of that communication.
I have all my communication in texts is that ok. Too.
Texts are fine as long as you can access them through any statute of limitation issues. So, be sure you don’t lose your texts if you lose or change your phone, by backing them up in cloud storage somewhere.
Hi my landlord calls text or emails me about or asking for various things because 1. The pandemic
2. We had a wildfire almost burn down the town including the apartment it’s honestly every 3 days between messages at most ! I’ve tried to keep up but if she doesn’t like the answer MORE emails MORE personal questions.. I’m tired I had emergency surgery in September a week after evacuating from a fire and now I have another surgery on the tenth I’m still working full time on top of this while trying to take care of loved ones with covid keeping them home because they are high risk … she posted a warning on my door today because I took three days to respond to an email and I wasn’t able to give her a time for her to come by … do I have to allow her to bug me every week or more ?
Finding the common ground between various parties can be difficult. We suggest you contact your landlord and politely express your frustrations with their communications. Try to offer an alternatice that works for everyone.