Existing Tenant Questions

[Andrew Almenar]

Hi All,

First time poster here.  I am currently in the market for another rental property and I have extensive experience dealing with tenants that I have signed to lease agreements.  However, during my current property search I am struggling to find the right questions to ask of existing tenants when walking through a prospective property.

I have a keen eye towards property defect, but when it comes to exactly I should be asking of the current tenants of a property I am interested in: I draw a blank.  For starters, I typically ask how long they have rented the unit and what their feelings are towards the current ownership.

Does anyone have any other recommendations of good questions to ask to the tenants (assuming they are friendly enough to answer)?  My goal is to retain long term tenants in the multi-family properties and I do not want to pry into their business too much if I do end up becoming their landlord down the line.

Thank you in advance and I look forward to contributing my personal experiences everyone as well.

[Marcia Maynard]

A few words in your post struck me as an indication as to why you may be "lucky to keep someone there for two years."  Considering we too want good tenants to stay in our property for a long time, we have a different approach to customer service.

We don't "deal" with tenants... we "serve" tenants. 

We don't see tenants as "a real pain"... some may challenge us, but they also at times help us discover something lacking in our approach, policies and procedures.

We don't "tie the lease in for two years"... we use month-to-month rental agreements and  provide the best accommodations and customer service we can. The tenants will determine how long they will stay and when they will leave, whether or not we have a longer term lease. Also, with the short term of MTM, we have many more options available to us, for changing the terms of the rental agreement and for encouraging a tenant to move out on their own if the tenancy isn't working for us.

We don't consider landlording to be "dirty work"... we consider it a privilege and we are passionate about it. We have an opportunity to not only provide good housing for responsible renters, but we also have an opportunity to contribute positively to the community. The benefit for us? A sound investment and the joy of realizing we too can make a difference.

Our longest term tenants? 26 years and 24 years (both of which live in one of our multi-family properties). Several more have been our tenants for 5 - 10 years. If we do effective tenant screening, provide a good product at a good value and give great service, we can expect tenants will stay at least 5 years and probably much longer. Our experience? We own and manage our own properties... 15 residential units... with only two evictions in the past 19 years. One of the properties is an 8-plex that we bought with all tenants in place. It didn't take long to establish our new way of doing things at the property. The good tenants  stayed, the marginal tenants learned how to be good tenants and stayed, and the others chose to move on their own.