By Aaron Swartz
Landlords have long been the villains of both fiction and reality for those of us who have to pay rent, but the reality of being a property manager isn’t nearly so heartless. Landlords are people, just like you and I, which means it’s well worth building a good relationship with them. As the person who controls your housing, it’s definitely a good idea to be on their good side, but it’s also a nice thing to do simply because your landlord deserves respect and compassion as a human being. To help you with building a good working relationship with your landlord, here are five easy tips you can incorporate into your life to make sure you stay on the best terms for the full term of your residency.
Get to Know Them
We’re starting with something that may seem self-explanatory but it’s always important to start simple, and nothing is quite as helpful when building a relationship as simply getting to know someone. Whether it’s a new friend, a coworker, or — you guessed it — your landlord, getting to know someone is the place to start when you’re going to be interacting with each other for the foreseeable future. Now, this doesn’t have to be anything extreme; a brief hello here and there, or asking about your landlord’s day, their life, family, friends, and hobbies. Ask them about what interests them, and share what you’re passionate about! Who knows, maybe you’ll even have some stuff in common. Talking with folks is never a waste of time, so invest some work into your relationship with your landlord by simply getting to know them better.
Use One Line of Communication
Pivoting away from the obvious advice, let’s move on to something most of you may not have thought about. Most landlords have a few ways for tenants to reach out using: a phone number or two, an email address, and maybe even a fax machine if they’re a bit on the older side. However, one thing that makes it difficult for landlords to keep track of their tenants is when said tenants bounce around across a whole bunch of different lines of communication. Keeping consistent with your communication will make a subtle but important difference with your landlord. They probably have a bunch of tenants, maybe in multiple properties throughout the city, the country, or even the world. With so many people to keep track of, who can blame them for having trouble keeping email, text, Zoom, and whatever else straight from client to client? Trust us, pick one method of communication and use that with your landlord, especially if they have a preference. It’ll improve your relationship dramatically.
Maintenance
One of the most common reasons you’ll have for reaching out to your landlord is definitely going to be when something breaks. Whether it’s a faulty washing machine, a broken radiator, or floodwaters from the latest spring storm, something will eventually go wrong that you’ll need your landlord’s help to fix. When that happens, it’s important that you reach out quickly to your landlord. When things are left broken it can often make them harder to fix, so being on top of faulty equipment and apartment damage is really important to your landlord, which should make it important to you if you want to build a good relationship with them.
Conversely, there is very much a line dividing when you need to involve the landlord and when you can fix things yourself, and wasting your landlord’s time on minor details won’t endear them to you. Did you put a hole in the wall or chip the paint? Pick up some spackle or a bucket of new paint to repair the damage yourself. Small things are your responsibility, it’s only the big stuff where you should get your landlord involved.
Pay Rent On Time
Another self-explanatory one, but it bears repeating because of just how important it truly is. Whether you’re having them over for tea every Wednesday or you never see them apart from when the rent’s due, it’s a simple fact that your relationship with your landlord is primarily a transactional one. They provide a living space and keep it in good repair, you pay them for housing you. This relationship hinges on you paying rent consistently and on time; if you don’t do that, then the whole thing falls apart.
Be Ready For Things to Go Wrong
It’s a fact of life that things go wrong, and it pays to be ready. Disasters strike, relationships end, and the good times are inevitably broken up by the bad, and vice-versa. That means that, at some point or another, your relationship with your landlord will have a downturn, either temporary or permanent. Whether it’s an unfair rent increase, damage to the property, or anything at all, no amount of work on your part will prevent bad things from happening, so be ready for the relationship to sour, at least a little, at some point.
Landlords are a fact of life for many people all over the world, which means a lot of you are going to have to deal with one at some point. With these tips, you should have a good idea on how to start building a better relationship with yours, whoever they may be.
Equal Housing Opportunity
