How to be Helpful to Your Tenants Right from the Start

When you own (or manage) rental property you are not only concerned with the asset but you should be concerned about your tenant(s). We have found that when you treat tenants right they often will enjoy the property for years which is great for them and excellent for you as the owner.  

When a tenant first moves in, consider developing a “welcome packet” that includes key information that can help them adjust to their new home. Your welcome packet could include helpful items ranging from popular local restaurants, nuances about the appliances, or just helpful tips. This welcome packet can be a key part to help them stay longer as it shows you care about the total experience of living at the property. To help you on your path of developing your own welcome packet we invite you to consider developing a cheat sheet of the following items:

As a rental owner you likely have at least your primary property insurance as well as even an umbrella policy on your property, but what do your renters have in place? For many renting a property they might not be familiar with the concept of renters insurance. Consider taking the time to provide a small write up of the benefits of renters insurance to include in your welcome packet and then providing a few recommendations. Many of the top carriers (Geico, Allstate, Statefarm, etc.) provide renters insurance as an option which makes it easy to obtain. If you have developed insurance agents as part of your key vendor list then consider providing those names to your renters.

Few items are as frustrating as getting moved in, getting up to go to work and then pulling a ticket off of your car as you didn’t know that “Thursday” was street-sweeping day. To help alleviate potential frustration share with your new tenants what day street sweeping will occur and what day trash pickup is to ensure tenants don’t have to learn the hard way. You can also assist your tenant by providing them a list of the trash company for set-up and the phone number of the city if they are the ones who handle street sweeping.

Yes most people can use their phone to quickly Google and/or look up the local utility companies, but why not make it a bit easier for them? Long Beach makes it easy with the utilities listed at on the Long Beach Government website and while you might think that is easy if someone is moving from out of state or even a different city from LA or Orange County it can help save them time.

A key item to add to your cheat sheet is what phone number will a tenant call when something troublesome occurs (think water heater dies or toilet clogged). When you are managing your own property this might be your phone number but what happens if it is 2am? As a property management company we have traditional operating hours as well as back-up to support our tenants 24-hours a day. While you might not have a 24-hour service consider locating key vendors (i.e. plumbing and heating) that you trust that have 24-hour support and see if they will allow a tenant call when in need.

Your welcome packet will develop over the years as you determine what helps make the process as easy as possible for tenants to move into your property. When you want to hear how we on-board tenants to our client’s properties please call us at (562) 888-0247 and we will be happy to share how bring happy tenants to each property under management.

And if you would like to discover how much we feel your property could rent for, simply request our Free Rental Analysis.