As a tenant, you can spend upward of one year, two years, and in some cases, even 5-10 years maintaining a mutual relationship with your landlord or property management company.
If you are a prospective tenant, we at GM Holdings would like to help you maintain and properly manage the relationship with your landlord or property management company, before and after you sign that lease agreement. Read on to learn more advice and useful tips on fostering a positive relationship with your landlord.
With Google and social media, it is now easier than ever to form a first impression of a business online.
Before you establish a relationship with a landlord, it’s essential that you know whether or not that person or those people are worth getting into a relationship with.
Understandably, tenants will want to do everything in their power to avoid dreadful buyer’s remorse and fall victim to sketchy dodgy business practices. WhoseYourLandlord, ReviewMyLandlord, and RateMyLandlord are great sites for ensuring that your property manager is free of them.
Yelp, the definitive local business review site, may also have evaluations of property management groups.
If you still can’t find reviews or testimonials, talking to former tenants can be a great offline resource for evaluating the positive and negative qualities of your potential landlord.
Property managers and landlords will feel more inclined to enter into a lease agreement with someone who’s been demonstrably proven to handle their investments wisely and pay their debts on time.
Just as the tenant can vet their landlord, it’s also easy for a landlord to view a general profile of their tenant, and credit bureau records are a common go-to resource for that.
In the US, general purpose credit scores range from 300-850, but typically, most property managers want their applicants to hold a score of 620 or higher. You can find numerous free or low-cost services online to infer your score from sites like TransUnion, FreeCreditReport, and Credit Karma. If you notice any unusual discrepancies in the report, you may want to write a letter to your credit bureau or finisher. Doing so will establish an investigation for at least 30 days, so if you suspect any report errors, be patient.
Even if your score dips below that magic 620 number, it doesn’t mean that you still can’t get in the good graces of your landlord or property management group. A credit report and a numerical score can only present so much context around your life and your financial choices. For starters, they’ll want to see that you currently possess the savings to cover a few months of rent.
Even if you have poor credit, showing your landlord your pay stubs to prove steady income or your bank statements to solidify those good savings can also be great redeeming qualities in the eyes of your prospective landlord or property management company. Co-signing the lease with someone with a stronger credit score could also help them see that you have the ability to cover your expenses.
To preserve mutual transparency, rights, and trustworthiness, it is vital that you and your property manager keep everything on the record and consistent with those records. If any discrepancies, problems, or disagreements come up, it is a valuable asset to have copies of letters, emails, and notices for future reference.
Overall, keep things friendly, open, and honest between you and your landlord/property manager. Update them on regular safety and maintenance issues and be proactive on sorting out those issues. Keep your word, arrange times to maintain mutual two-way communication, and ultimately, like any conflict, both landlord and tenant should try to understand and empathize with the other party if a dispute does arise.
