How to communicate effectively with tenants

Effective communication with your tenants will help you to maintain a good property manager-tenant relationship. Clear and transparent communication helps to avoid misunderstandings or potential conflicts and ensures that both parties are on the same page about key concerns including rent payments, property maintenance, and property visits. Honest and effective communication could also encourage tenants to renew their lease for the next academic year, reducing tenant turnover. 

To help you, we've put together a complete guide on how to communicate with tenants.

How to maintain effective communication with tenants 

Bear in mind these quick and easy suggestions when establishing a professional relationship with tenants, and you'll find that communication is far easier and stress-free.

Set expectations from the start

You can help to create a more seamless communication experience for tenants by clearly expressing your communication preferences from the outset of the tenancy. Let your tenants know key information including the best channels to contact you through, when your working hours are, and how quickly you are typically able to respond to enquiries.

Listen to concerns and be honest

Communication is a two-way street. To maintain good relationships with your tenants you need to actively listen to their queries and concerns and try to respond with empathy and understanding. It's also important that you are honest, transparent, and realistic in your responses so as not to set unrealistic expectations. 

Respond promptly 

Where possible, try to respond to any maintenance requests efficiently. It can be very stressful to experience maintenance issues as a tenant. Responding in a timely manner will show that you value their concerns, even if you are letting them know that the issue might take longer to resolve. If any urgent maintenance requests come through, you should aim to organise a resolution within 24 hours. 

Provide appropriate notice

When you organise maintenance works, property inspections, or property showings, you need to provide appropriate notice to your tenants. This means that you should inform them at least 24 hours before the appointment. Remember that they live in the property, and you should be as respectful as possible when organising any appointments there. 

Keep written records

It is important to keep written records of all your communications with tenants, even if they occur verbally. This will help to avoid any misunderstandings, disagreements, or conflicts down the line and mean you will always be able to support your claims with evidence.

Different ways to communicate with tenants 

It's good to provide your tenants with more than one way to contact you, especially in case of an emergency. At the very least, you should provide your tenants with your phone number and email address so they have a few different ways to reach you. Remember, not everyone likes to communicate in the same way, so it's always best to offer a few different options. 

Email

Email is probably the most common method of correspondence between property managers and tenants. Email has many benefits: it is efficient, professional, and ensures that there is always a written record of communications. 

Concurrent, the property management system from StuRents Group, has lots of features that help to streamline, simplify, and speed up email communications with tenants. You can create your own library of custom, tailorable email templates within Concurrent to use when sending messages to tenants. This helps to make regular communications, like welcome messages, check-out messages or property visit details far less hassle-free to send. 

The system will also send reminders and notifications to tenants on your behalf; for instance, to remind them to make rent payments. You can retain full visibility of these emails in the Contact Centre so you can take a hands-free approach with complete confidence. 

Phone 

You should provide your tenants with your phone number so they can call you in case of an emergency or so you can discuss certain arrangements or issues verbally. If you are comfortable and prefer this method of communication, you can also allow your tenants to text you about issues. You should establish your boundaries regarding text communication up front at the beginning of the tenancy.

Tenant app

If you can, offering an app for tenants is a great idea. This is particularly true if you are a property manager for PBSA and need to deal with multiple tenants within a building as you can send broadcast messages and mass notifications, helping to streamline tenancy management. With Concurrent, you can offer tenants access to an app, fully customised in your branding. Through the app, you can communicate with tenants via direct messages, send notifications and reminders, create a forum for messages and announcements, and allow tenants to log maintenance issues. 

Say hello to more effective tenant communication with Concurrent

Want to simplify the process of corresponding with tenants? With Concurrent, you'll gain access to a wealth of features that make tenant communication easier and more effective. Save time and hassle while improving your tenant relationships - what could be better?

Want to find out more? Book a Concurrent demo today.