Property owners all wish for perfect occupants who adhere to every part of their leases. Realistically, that does not always happen and you can be faced with a difficult tenant. Here are three top tips to deal with disrespectful tenants.

Know Your Rights

The best favor you can do for yourself is to turn the day-to-day management of your investment property over to a reliable, local property management company. Knowing and keeping up with the law makes a professional manager well worth their cost. When you run up against a problem tenant, knowing the law will benefit you greatly.

The last thing you want to do when you have to regain a unit from a difficult renter is to make a legal misstep. Tenants have rights, but you have responsibilities as the landlord. Of course, you have landlord rights too. Some tenants cause problems consistently. They are late with rent, withhold it for arbitrary reasons or break the law outright.

A full-service property management company will have full-time experts on staff who know the law and the right steps to take for any type of problem tenant. Your challenge is handling each of these problem tenants legally and with swift action. Once the immediate problem is resolved, review your policies and agreements to ensure the situation cannot repeat itself.

Document Everything

Since you cannot know ahead of time what the outcome will be with any tenant, document everything, starting with your first meeting. Even if you used a professional management service to screen your prospective tenants, there’s still a chance that your tenant could become difficult.

Should a situation escalate and require legal remedies, written evidence can be used to show a pattern of problem behaviors. Attorneys call these notes “refreshed memory” because you can legally rely on them to help witnesses recall exact exchanges between your residential property management service’s agent and the troublesome tenant.

You and the professionals helping to manage your properties need to document everything as a matter of procedure. The tenant who first complains about a sticking front door may have a legitimate concern. If the same tenant calls back six times in the next two weeks with petty complaints of squeaky floor boards and scratches on the glass stovetop, you know you have an attention-seeking tenant who will generate a thick file of anecdotal evidence. It’s important to have a standard operating procedure to document every tenant complaint.

Be Confident

To be a successful property owner, it is important to hold your ground. Be unwavering in how you administer your written policies and sticking to the same procedures for your property. No matter if you have responsible or problem tenants, the property manager you partner with is one of your strongest allies. Working with a property management company such as Property Advantage can provide you with more tips on how to best handle a challenging tenant.

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