Text, Phone, or Email – How Should You Contact Tenants?

Good communication with your tenants is a significant aspect of being a successful Fruita rental property owner. But in actual fact, with a bit more options at hand, which is the best method of communication? Landlords are seeking and finding new convenience in the ability to text email, and call their tenants, but really, are all of these options the best means to go about staying in touch? It’s an appropriate question since the approach you contact tenants isn’t just about keeping them at ease and well-advised. There are equally real financial and legal issues involved with your chosen method.

Texting

The majority of tenants and property owners just enjoy and even take for granted the ease and convenience of texting. And for simple things or just for keeping in contact, texting can be a favorable way to keep the lines of communication with your tenant open. Conditional on what messaging platform you use, it is additionally quite possible to send more than just text messages back and forth. Tenants can send photos to assist and help you schedule repairs, and you can send links and attachments back.

There are burdens and drawbacks to texting, however. One huge one encompasses the ability to track and save your conversations. As a property owner, it’s essential to document your interactions with your tenant in the event of disagreements or when legal issues transpire. You’ll need to ensure that you save the entire history of your messages back and forth while texting.

Including saving messages, several tenants may furthermore abuse the privilege of texting you whenever they want. If you use a personal or business cellphone for your conversations, tenants may believe that you will immediately respond to them at all hours and get upset if you don’t. These drawbacks should encourage you to think and plan carefully just before utilizing texting to contact tenants.

Phone Calls

Calling tenants on the phone is an appropriate means to be more direct and personable with them. There is no substitute for hearing someone’s voice and executing a verbal conversation in real-time. By speaking to your tenants on the phone consistently, you can help promote a positive working relationship with them and more smoothly communicate your care and concern for their comfort and happiness. This, in turn, could lead to tenants staying longer in your rental.

Same as texting, the most crucial impediment to making use of the phone to contact tenants is the complication in documenting your conversations. Specifically, if you discuss liability issues or sensitive information, you will need a way to record your discussions if a dispute arises. You will need as well to remember to answer your phone each time your tenants call. Getting a landlord’s voicemail whenever they call will discourage your tenants from contacting you in the future, making phone calls a less useful communication mode.

Email

Email is the middle ground between texting and phone calls. It is a rather convenient method of communication, as most people usually make use of and are comfortable with email. But the best thing is, it offers you an uncomplicated method to document your entire conversation with your tenants due to the fact that plenty of email programs allow you to save email chains for months or even years. Another excellent perk of email is that it gives you time to think and write carefully before responding to a tenant’s question or complaint. You can send documents and other attachments more aptly with email, all of which are date-and-time stamped, so you know what was sent to whom and when. This can all be very practical if you do have a need for records of your messages thereafter.

But however, email isn’t as speedy or convenient as texting, and tenants may not desire to write out every message in email. Also, a few people don’t enjoy using email or may not check their inboxes frequently, resulting in delayed responses. Email is moreover more impersonal, and it can be toilsome to manage your tone so that you sound warm and friendly.

In the final analysis, you may apply various methods to make it a point that your tenant communications are frequent, friendly, secure, and very well documented. Above all, it’s good to work with your and your tenant’s communication preferences to seek a way to stay in touch that you both prefer and will put to use regularly.

Tenant communication can be an arduous and challenging element of owning rental properties in Fruita. But certainly, Real Property Management Now can help! We can contact tenants on your behalf and make sure your tenants have someone they can rely on when issues arise – without disturbing your daily schedule or your good night’s sleep. For more useful information, contact us online or call us at 970-314-7123.