How do residential landlords attract and keep the best tenants?

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Supply and demand for residential lettings varies from year to year and region to region, but regardless of market fluctuations, best practice is to attract and retain conscientious, respective and long term tenants. This minimises the time, effort and cost of regular re-marketing your property and maintaining its condition.

With that in mind, here are 4 top tips for securing longer tenancies with the right occupants:

  1. Present your property, including the garden, in a clean and tidy condition with neutral internal decoration. It’s not enough these days to just present an empty box and expect prospective tenants to imagine themselves living there. Making the investment and effort to present the property in an aspirational way with the right décor and furnishings (and therefore photos and videos) will increase the attractiveness and perceived value.
  2. Be an effective communicator, it helps create a positive relationship with your tenant. In another one of our guides, we suggest that rather than having a conventional supplier-client relationship with your tenant, treat it more as a partnership. Mutual respect and open communication are the foundations of building a long term and productive relationship with your tenants.
  3. Arrange regular visits to the property to assess its condition and any maintenance needs. As the old phrase goes, ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and before you know it, months and years have passed without any checks on your property. But the longer things are left, sometimes the worse they can be so frequent checks are vital to make sure they don’t get out of hand and require more work and money to resolve.
  4. Be aware of your responsibilities around maintenance and respond promptly to requests. Neglecting repairs can drive tenants away – if you don’t care about the property, why should they?

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