A good rental property can be a consistently profitable investment that remains in your family for generations. However, regardless of where a property is located or how accommodating it is, it isn’t worth much if you can’t find tenants. There are a variety of reasons for which landlords have trouble finding renters – some of which are completely out of their control, and many of which are fully within their control. So, if you’re having trouble finding tenants for a rental property, there’s a good chance the fault lies with you.
There’s Little Demand for Housing in the Area
If very little demand for housing exists within your rental property’s locale, you shouldn’t be surprised to see a lack of interest from prospective tenants. This is among the reasons it’s so important to do location research before committing to purchase a rental. When seeking out rental properties, make a point of limiting yourself to areas in which demand for housing is abundant. To get a feel for how much demand exists within a certain area, do some research on the area’s population size, rate of growth, projected growth, local economy, property values and rent prices. All of this information should provide you with a solid understanding of how much money you can expect to make with this investment.
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You Lack Professionalism When Dealing with Tenants
While few renters expect to become good friends with their respective landlords, they do expect landlords to maintain a certain degree of professionalism. For example, if you have a habit of taking a long time to answer tenant communiques or ignoring them entirely, you’ll need to correct this behavior posthaste. Consistently placing phone calls, text messages and emails from tenants on the backburner is practically guaranteed to lower your renter retention numbers and result in negative online feedback. Furthermore, depending on the nature of the communiques you’re ignoring, you may be placing yourself in legal jeopardy.
With this in mind, make an effort to respond to tenant communiques in the timeliest possible manner – preferably within the same business day. In addition, make sure every tenant has a phone number and email address at which you can be reached during business hours, as well as an emergency number to call in response to problems that occur after-hours.
You Refuse to Stay on Top of Property Maintenance
A lack of attention paid to property maintenance can severely impact your ability to attract new tenants. After all, if you develop a reputation for refusing to address major problems with your rental property, few renters are likely to take a chance on you.
Of course, properly maintaining a small single-family property is very different from maintaining a large multi-unit property. With the former, you may be able to take on a fair number of the maintenance tasks by yourself, but when it comes to the latter, there’s a good chance you’ll need to hire full-time maintenance personnel. This will ensure that maintenance requests are processed and addressed in a timely and professional manner – which will be a boon to both your tenants and the property itself.
The longer certain issues are allowed to linger, the more severe – and costly – they’re liable to become. As such, tackling them in an expedient fashion is crucial to minimizing damage, as well as the overall cost of repair. Furthermore, the sooner maintenance issues are addressed, the happier tenants are likely to be – and the more likely they are to stick around.
In the absence of tenants, no rental property can generate income. So, if you’ve noticed a steady decline in renter retention and/or applications from prospective tenants, you’d be wise to get on top of the issue posthaste. While there’s a possibility that the situation is completely outside of your control, there’s a good chance that certain actions on your part can help improve things. Landlords who are curious about a reduction in interest from new renters should consider the reasons discussed above.
