Most landlords don’t! A tenant retention strategy is more than just a card at Christmas time and a letter now and again.
It begins with the mindset that property ownership and management is a business like any other; you don’t exist without customers and your customers are primarily your tenants. If your tenants are happy they will remain in their premises and your landlord’s will be happy. Yes, you need to be firm but you also need to be fair.
“It amazes me how much money is spent on marketing to attract new tenants when so little effort is put into retaining tenants”, says Guy de la Porte. When you analyze the cost of finding a new tenant, advertising, letting commission, tenant installation allowances etc, isn’t it worth putting some time into developing a good tenant retention strategy?
Whether it is a factory, warehouse, office complex, industrial park or shopping centre, tenants want a constructive relationship with the landlord or property manager. Often rental is one of their biggest overheads and they want value for money. Why do you need to focus so hard on building long-term tenant commitments? It is always better to retain a tenant who is reasonable and pays their rent on time than to go into the market to fill a vacancy.
The bottom line is that you want your tenants to be in an environment that promotes their productivity and growth, and you can only achieve this by being a fair and responsive landlord.
Like a good marriage, it is all about relationships and communication. There needs to be a person dedicated to understanding and fulfilling tenant’s needs. Landlords, who under promise and over deliver, keep their tenants,
The problem is that property management companies under charge for their services and their property managers quite simply have too many buildings to cope. “We only take on buildings that make sense to us” says delaPorte. “We work for landlord’s that buy into our value system and we look after the building as though they are our own”. “We are proud to say we are not the cheapest, but we deliver the best value to our clients
