To lower rent or not?

[Gerald Barron]

As you can tell from the title I'm trying to decide whether I should lower my rent or not. Here's my situation. I have a class A property that I currently rent for 2800/mo. It is kind of niche for the area as I rent it fully furnished annually. I currently have great renters. They take good care of the property, keep it very clean, and even added 1500.00 dollars in landscaping on their own dime. Their lease is coming up in November and they want to stay but they want the rent lowered. They offered to sign a two year lease if I lowered the rent to 2600.00 a month. I think I know what I'm going to do but I thought I'd ask the community. So what would you do? Lower the rent and take the two year lease or something different?

[Joe Splitrock]

@Thomas S. last year I got an offer in the mail for a different internet provider that was $20 less per month. I was completely happy with the service of my current provider, so I called my provider and asked if they would lower my rate by $20 per month so I would stay with them. I got bounced around and went up two manager levels and the answer was, "our service is better and no price discount is available". A week later, I signed up with the other provider for $20 less and called my current provider to cancel. They immediately offered me a $20 discount to stay with them, but this was after I already had the other service installed. I told them it was too late and they proceeded to almost beg me to stay with them.

As a business owner, you have to be aware of your competition. Customers have options and they will move over money.