How Rentec Direct Property Management Software Can Improve Tenant Communication
Great communication is essential for any relationship, and the landlord-tenant relationship is certainly no exception.
Lack of tenant communication can cost you both time and money as a landlord or property manager. Keeping great tenants relies on great communication, and good communication can even be the key to protecting your property from tenant damage and helping your tenants genuinely understand the nuances of their lease terms and any essential tenant responsibilities or maintenance.
Whether you are a property manager or a landlord, property management software can be essential in improving tenant communication. To get the most value out of your software, it’s important to understand your goals when it comes to tenant communication and what tenants want when it comes to creating a long-lasting landlord-tenant relationship.
The Importance of Great Tenant Communication
Since common tenant complaints are often the result of poor communication, focusing on communication best practices will allow you to keep your good tenants once renewal season arrives.
Great tenant communication will ensure that your tenants:
- Fully understand their lease requirements
- Understand the importance of tenant maintenance
- Are aware of how and when to report an issue with the rental
- Feel supported and alerted regarding inspection times and scheduled maintenance times
- Feel comfortable expressing any concerns they may have
Whether you are a property manager juggling the needs of a lot of tenants or are a small landlord who is juggling daily life and tenant management, you’ll need an effective way to communicate quickly and successfully with your tenants. This ensures you keep your tenants happy while living at your rental property and sets everyone up for success.
Best Practices for Tenant Communication:
At its heart, good communication with your tenants is simple.
- Offer multiple avenues for communication
- Keep lines of communication open
- Follow up quickly
- Listen to problems with empathy
- Give advanced notice
- Check-in regularly
As with any relationship, the landlord-tenant relationship can have its ups and downs. Ensuring that you are proactively taking the steps necessary to keep your tenants informed and ensure they feel comfortable voicing any concerns or questions can have a huge impact on your tenant’s experience at your rental property.
Tenant Communication Best Practices with Property Management Software
Offer Multiple Communication Avenues through Your Software:
Property management software allows tenants and landlords to communicate a variety of ways. Rentec Direct’s property management software offers your tenants a tenant portal which ensures that your tenants have access to answer their own questions or submit any requests regardless of your business hours.
Remember that just as everyone has their own learning style, your tenants may have different forms of communication with which they connect. Offering multiple communication avenues can ensure that your tenants feel well-informed and welcomed at your rental property. From newsletters, email, text messages, flyers, infographics, tenant handbooks, and tenant portals, there are endless possibilities to keep communication lines open and connect with your tenants.
Remember that Great Tenant Communication Starts With Potential Tenants:
Searching for the perfect rental and gonig through the application process can be a stressful time for renters. Offering professional and timely communication during this time can set your rentals apart from the competition. Property management software makes it easy to make a great impression and set a foundation for great tenant communication far before the lease papers are signed.
Property management software’s lead tracking solutions are perfect to enhance connection and meet prospective tenants needs from the start. Rentec Direct’s lead management tool can help you match tenant prospects to available properties based on their interests and rental preferences. If you don’t have a property available at the moment that matches your tenants needs, they can save their preferences and get an automatic email when a property becomes available that fits their criteria. Between the lead tracking tools and all of the marketing and leasing tools available with a Rentec Direct account, promptly responding to prospective tenants is simple and efficient. This paves the way to excellent communication and establishes great connections with your tenants from the beginning.
How to Communicate with Your Tenants Through Property Management Software:
For many landlords and property managers, property management software bridges the gap between landlord and tenant, allowing seamless communication. Whether you seek to remind tenants of upcoming events or simply want to send a past-due rent notice, Rentec Direct property management software has all the tools you need to seamlessly connect with all your tenants.
Property management software makes it easy to communicate with tenants.
Through Rentec Direct property management software, you can:
- Send bulk information to all your tenants (email or text message)
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- Send resident event invitations
- Send scheduled maintenance reminders
- Send seasonal newsletters
- Create reminders to send annual emails or birthday cards
- Reply to an individual tenant’s inquiries
- Respond to maintenance requests
- View past communications with tenants
- Automated reminders for tenants
Rentec Direct integrates with Twilio, ensuring you can communicate with your tenants, vendors, and owners by sending and receiving text messages (also known as SMS messaging) directly from your account. Automate your communications and reminders to tenants, owners, and vendors with text messages within your Rentec Direct account.
Within the software, you can also send emails and upload files to allow your tenants one place to go with all the information they need about the rental property: from lease agreements to upcoming events, everything can be sent to your tenant with the push of a button.
How Tenants Can Communicate Through the Rentec Direct Tenant Portal Mobile App:
There’s no doubt that property management software makes life easier for landlords and property managers. With an all-in-one platform to manage financials, marketing and rental applications, vendors and owners, as well as navigate any day-to-day communications with tenants, there are a lot a reasons to love property management software as a landlord.
However, property management software benefits your renters just as much. Nurturing a healthy landlord-tenant relationship requires that tenants have the ability to communicate easily as well. Give your tenants an online portal to complete renter- related tasks from their phone, tablet, or computer. With a tenant portal and a mobile app, tenants can easily reach out with a few clicks of a button.
Tenants also have access to other important information and renter-related tasks through the tenant portal, giving tenants more autonomy to pay rent and view property notifications without needing an in-person visit each time.
Through the Tenant Portal from Rentec Direct your residents can:
- Pay rent online
- Submit maintenance requests
- Receive property notices
- View lease agreements
- Purchase renters insurance
- Update their contact information
An analysis of rent payment data reveals that providing your tenants with the ability to pay rent online and use automatic payment options each month directly coincides with fewer late fees! This means offering your tenants a mobile application not only allows them to communicate with you more easily, but it ensures that you will have fewer unpleasant conversations about rent payments and late fees.
Since monthly rent accounts for a large portion of a renter’s income, no landlord or property manager wants to be the bearer of bad news and require tenants to pay a late fee. Offering your tenants a mobile app and tenant portal can help ensure that your conversations stick to other topics, since you’ll be dealing with less unpaid rent each month.
While not all conversations or reminders to your tenants will be good news, needing less “bad news” reminders can do a lot to strengthen your landlord-tenant relationship
Final Thoughts on Improving Tenant Communication with Property Management Software:
Improving tenant communication doesn't need to be cumbersome. A few additional notices, reminders, and streamlining renter-related tasks for your tenants can go a long way to improving the tenant experience and your landlord-tenant relationship. Property management software makes it easy to improve tenant communication through automation, making you far more efficient than before but with a stronger connection to your tenants. Time savings is always the goal with every Rentec Direct feature, and there's no doubt you'll find that you have more time on your hands to focus on the tasks you want to do each day, while still providing a quality experience for your tenants, applicants, and prospects.