Tenant Satisfaction Questionairre - Would you do it?

Question

Do you send questionnaire's to your tenants on ways to improve your services? The only feedback that I get from the tenant is through the property manager. I'm thinking of sending a letter to the tenants with a postage-paid reply envelope. I'm thinking some reasons for the questionnaire are:

1. It allows the tenant to bring up any issues. However, it's a double edged sword in the sense that there maybe unnecessary issues that they may want addressed.

2. It allows the property owner to know whether or not the property manager is doing their job.

3. Also, I'm hoping that sending this questionnaire would keep the tenant in the property for a longer duration.

Would you agree a questionnaire is a good or bad thing? Any other reasons for doing a questionnaire?

All the best,

Alex

Soh Tanaka · Answer

I am a property manager, and I also use property managers, and I would NOT recommend you do that. I would very least ask your property manager first. If you have to do what you are planning to do, then you might have a wrong property manager.

Brian Lucier · Answer

@Alex R.

Hi Alex, I am going to go against the grain on this one. I do agree with the comments that the property management should do this for you. You hired them to do a job AND give you a buffer between the day-today operations of being a property owner so you can do your best and highest work as a Real Estate investor.

Why would you want to give your residents your direct contact information? Ever? That is exactly why you hired a property management company. Set it up with your PM to do this for you.

We use resident surveys for move-ins, move-outs, and maintenance calls. These are not hard to set up through AppFolio and we get to track and measure our service performance in our business matrix section of our software. Yes, its true, sometimes we mess things up and things are not perfect. We want to know about that right away. We had someone move in once and were not happy about the deep cleaning crew we hired. We never would have known without the automated survey.

She was able to express her concerns and we took responsibility Immediately. We expressed our concern and disappointment in her lack of satisfaction of the condition of the unit when she moved in and offered to do whatever we could to make the matter right for her. We were more than ready and prepared to offer her $100 dollars for the inconvenience for her time and discomfort. It turned out she replied saying it wasn't that bad. She had already cleaned up the area in question and it was no big deal. She also "THANKED US" for acknowledging her concerns so quickly with a professional response! In the end, we took a potentially toxic situation, listened to her concerns, addressed them, took responsibility, and created a fan of our property management company.

By reaching out to her on the matter we were able to correct an issue at the very start of the tenancy that could have festered and grown into a rift down the road if we had not addressed the problem immediately. We never would have known without the automated survey.

This is our business and I want to get this right.

All too often, the only time you hear from your resident is when there is a problem, repair, or complaint - and the only time your resident hears from you is when the rent is late. Wouldn't it just turn our property management industry on it's head if we actually established a good report with our residents to stay in touch with their concerns? Wouldn't they feel more appreciated and actually stay longer reducing turnover costs, vacancies, and worse? Wouldn't it be a radically wild concept to reach out with a monthly newsletter, birthday greeting graphic, holiday text or email, or some other POSITIVE feedback during the life cycle of their residency with you - other than "your rent is late"?

If you are interested in this train of thought please visit our our blog post on our BiggerPockets member's page: Dear Landlords: “Customer Service” is an “Attitude” not a “Department”

So yes, I am a fan of the survey as a way of letting your residents let you know how you are doing - and for doing a whole lot more to retain our residents as satisfied customers.

I know this post will not be popular with most folks, but I am ok with that too. If I were renting to your family, daughter, or grandma, you may appreciate that we try to get it right - and send the survey to keep your property on the track to success.

Lien Vuong · Answer

You're stepping over your PM by doing that in my opinion. If your tenants are happy with the property they will renew their lease, that would be the strongest indication of a satisfied tenant in my opinion. You've agreed to have the PM take over the relationship to manage the property and if it's going well, I really wouldn't tarnish by this questionnaire.

Filipe Pereira · Answer

@Alex R. Also a property manager here and also don't recommend that you do it. Not because your PM may be hiding something from you, but because to me that feels like a breach of the relationship between you and the PM. If you hire us to be a PM - then let us be the PM; and that means letting us have the relationship with the tenants. Your question as to whether or not the PM is doing their job should be answered by the rent roll you are or are not receiving. That part is pretty simple. Generally speaking, pissed off tenants don't pay their rent and happy tenants do.

If you feel that you have to go behind your PM's back to get the "truth" it's time for a new PM, simply put. Lastly, the owner - pm - tenant relationship should be a two party relationship.

One party: Owner & PM

Other party: TenantOnce you separate the owner & pm into different parties it's not a unified front and you open the door to potential "the owner said I could do this" or "but the PM said I could do it this way". Then comes the never ending cross checking texts between owner and PM to verify who said what. It's a huge PITA at the end of the day, and I highly advise against it. We've fired more clients over this alone than everything other reason combined.

Account Closed · Answer

This is a really interesting question.  I'm no longer a property manager, and when I was, I just worked for two brothers who were partners.  I was an on-site manager.  The brothers would usually come every Saturday morning to do maintenance (one or the other or both of them), and more often if necessary.  They were old-school depression babies and did most of their own maintenance even though they were in their 70's and 80's.

They were soft-hearted with tenants and the tenants learned to go around me when they thought I'd say no (like little kids) and waylay the brothers in the parking lot when they'd show up on a Saturday morning, to get the "owner" to agree to something instead of asking me first.  Drove me nuts!  Inevitably, it would be something that would cause a problem down the road, and then it was my job to fix the problem.  No matter how I told them to just tell all the tenants to go talk to Sue, sometimes they just couldn't help themselves.

So, I do understand how frustrating it is to have an owner not let a manager do the job they hired them to do.  It was my job to be the bad guy, the negotiator, the enforcer, etc.  Even though I was very friendly, I was also very firm on the building policies, which was really important in a 26 unit building shaped like a "U" made up of mainly tiny studios, where many of them could hear everything that was going on in the other units.  It took solid rules and consistency to keep everybody content.

On the other hand, I have also been burned by a bad PM and have known numerous other owners who have also been burned.  So, I get wanting to find out what's going on.

Other than the obvious things you'd notice, such as dwindling reserves, unusual maintenance costs, evictions that shouldn't have been necessary if screening was good, etc., maybe there would be a compromise.  Maybe you could send a survey to tenants who have left and ask them to fill out a survey on their experience with the management company?

A problem with even that, that I can see, is that once you become aware of a problem, you might then have to deal with it.  And, what if it is a legal problem?

So, as it's late and I need to go to bed and I'm kind of rambling here, I think I've just talked myself out of even sending a survey to a former tenant.  I'm thinking you should really just pay good attention to what's happening regarding the management of your property - are the rents on time, are tenants renewing rental agreements, are maintenance costs reasonable - judge the PM on performance you can quantify in that way.

And, maybe consider self-managing or finding an employee as opposed to a PM company, if you want to be more involved.  Honestly, that's what I'd do.  I'd be the contact person and find my own maintenance people I could call, but not everyone wants to be even that involved, or has had the experience to make it fairly seamless, like I could do now.

Brian Lucier · Answer

@Soh Tanaka

Hello Mr. Tanaka! Had not thought to share those stats with the owners. That is an interesting question that we will look into. We provide weekly traffic and conversion but had not thought to share the surveys. There are so many smaller work orders that open and close they are usually not reported. We mostly use them internally to help motivate the team. When there is good news, all credit to the team. When things go not so well, I take full responsibility for my team as their leader and Regional Property Manager.

Thank you Soh!!!

Soh Tanaka · Answer

@Brian Lucier I don't think you are going against anyone here. I think most of us agree that it's not a good idea for an owner who has a property manager to directly contact the tenant.

I like the fact that you are doing surveys. Do you share the results with your owners?

Michael King · Answer

@Alex R. I don't think tenants care to the same level as you do, about your property. If something's broken and they want it fixed, they'll tell you.

Chris C. · Answer

very true

Don Fordham · Answer

As someone with a background in customer satisfaction surveys, it's not surprising that PMs don't like your idea. No one likes to be evaluated. However the only way to know how your tenants feel about your PM is to ask them. Any PM who says "if the rent gets paid, they must be happy with our service" is dodging the issue. I pay my cable bill every month but I hate my cable provider and think they provide bad service. Yet I have limited options and would drop them in a second if I got a better option. You are paying your PM to provide services to your tenants and have a right to know if your tenants are satisfied with their performance. You can get a PO box for responses and make up a name (Acme surveys) so you don't have to provide your name or address. If your PM objects to you asking about them, it's time to shop for a new PM. You may find your tenants think your PM is wonderful or that they all have the same issue with them.

Make the survey one page with simple questions. End with an open-ended question "how can the management improve?"

Tenant Satisfaction Questionairre - Would you do it?

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