Bought my tenants a bottle of liquor as a move-in gift

[Michael Clay]

When I purchased my first rental property, a single family home here in Charlotte, 2.5 years ago I bought my tenants a bottle of their favorite liquor on their move-in day. Looking back at this now, I get a nice laugh off of it. I'm aware that this is borderline criminal, sacrilegious, offensive and against everything that we've been taught as real estate investors. 

In hindsight, in this specific situation it ended up working to my benefit. I manage my own properties, so I personally chose these tenants. They were A+ tenants for the 2.5 years they stayed in my property, payed their rent through zelle for 30 consecutive months on the 1st of the month. Every single time there was a problem with the property, the heat or air going out, clogged pipes/toilets, they were very understanding and worked great with my contractors. I firmly believe that developing this type of "friendly" relationship with my tenants allowed their tenancy to work out perfect in every aspect. When they moved out last month I represented them to buy their first home. It was great to see them fulfill their dream of becoming homeowners. As an added benefit, I made $5,000 in commission for the transaction and they referred me my new tenants.

Would I recommend this to the majority of first time landlords?  In most situations, no. I'm sharing this because all of experts and forums would tell you that going in this direction as a landlord is going to end up going south quickly, in my experience, it ended up benefiting me greatly.

My property is in a C- neighborhood and rents for $995/month. I understand that if you're scaling your business this type of hands-on landlording would prove hard to pull off and won't work out for most landlords. I wanted to share this story because it ended up working for me and could end up benefiting other investors!