Building a Personal Relationship with Tenants - Good or Bad?

[Shiloh Lundahl]

I hear a lot on the podcasts and have read on the forums that many property owners pretend that they are not the owners of the property when they meet a tenant or potential tenant.  Instead, they lead that person to believe that they just work for the owner. They don’t want the tenant knowing who they really are.  

So I tried following that same pattern by trying not to have much contact with tenants or potential tenants and just having my assistant be the go between for everything. Then I met another investor who had a few rentals he was selling and I was looking at buying his small portfolio.  He set up a time for me to go take a look at the houses and when we got there his tenants were happy to see him and gave him a hug and talked with him about how things were going as they showed the house.

I compare that experience to a different experience I had where we purchased a property that had 2 homes on it where the tenants had no relationship with the owner. It was very difficult to get any info about the tenants before we purchased the property and soon after we purchased it the tenants in one house moved out.

I realize this is a very small sample size to draw any conclusions from, but I guess I want to challenge the belief that it is better for the owner that the tenant not to know who he or she is. Real estate is a relationship business after all, therefore, would it not be better to build relationships with tenants?