The adage “a little goes a long way” can be said for dealing with rental properties. A small act of kindness, consistent communication, or even a small feature can help tenants understand that you truly care and keep them enjoying your property for years to come. While some features photograph well for a new rental listing there are other small items that we have found that can give you the edge to attract tenants. As you look to continue to maximize your rental portfolio consider these to help you garner the best possible tenants.
An Opportunity to Personalize Your Rental Property
This is a tough one and one that can make even the seasoned landlord cringe a bit. To get tenants to stay in a property long term they need to feel like it is their property and there is no finer way to achieve that than if you provide them the freedom to personalize the property to their taste.
The most common example of personalizing a property to a tenant would be to allow them to paint a room. For those that are already a bit queasy with this idea consider the following aspects if you decide to allow this feature:
- Permission
- The tenant would need to get your permission on which room to paint. Our suggestion would be to limit the personalization to a bedroom as that is a common area of desire to personalize and is generally much smaller than common areas.
- You likely will repaint anyway
- When you have a tenant stay 3+ years chances are you are going to repaint anyway...now imagine if they stayed 5 or 6 because they got to paint their room?
- Paint Colors
- You might consider limiting the color choices. Colors that require extensive cover such as black might be on a list of not allowed colors. Most tenants will be happy to have choices even with a few restrictions.
Paint isn’t permanent and it is only one of the visual aspects that provides tenants a sense of ownership (i.e. some people might just want to plant their own plants). If you consider this allowing tenants to personalize the property a bit there is a good chance you will enjoy great long term tenants.
Small Storage Area
Storage continues to be in high demand throughout the Southern California market. When you evaluate a rental application while you might be looking at only their ability to afford your rental, remember people have other bills that might not show up on the application and one of those could be storage. Many of the 1940’s homes throughout Long Beach don’t have a ton of storage and if your tenant is parking their vehicle in the garage there isn’t much room left to store odds and ends.
To help tenants stay for the long haul consider updating your
Long Beach rental with smart storage solutions
both internally and even as part of your property. For example, you can even get a cost effective storage container (20’ or 40’) for as little as a few thousand dollars. If this can work with your lot configuration this can be a great addition to help someone store those items that otherwise they might be paying $150-$250+ a month to store.
Ability to do External Decorations at Christmas
Holidays are often a time for extensive decorations, but if you live in a large apartment complex your options can be very limiting. When you own a single family home as a rental or even a smaller residential income property (i.e. 2-4 units) you can create a sense of community by empowering tenants with the ability to do external decorations. This can include notifying your tenant that they can do window decorations or even hanging of Christmas lights. Many will feel truly part of the neighborhood (thereby staying longer) if they can decorate the home along with the rest of the neighborhood.
When it comes to retaining tenants it often comes down to how are you making it truly feel like their home vs. a traditional rental. To help you determine what could be best for your property to empower tenants to rent for longer periods we invite you to call us today at (562) 888-0247. Or if you prefer a complete evaluation of your property we invite you to fill out our
Free Rental Analysis.
