The new year is around the corner and for most owners, they will be thinking about how they can add more investments to their portfolios or grow their bottom lines. Instead of focusing on adding more properties to your investment portfolio, you should focus on income growth by becoming a better landlord instead.

How to Become A Better Landlord

1. Be organized.

In other words, treat your business like a business. See, a lot of people (myself included) get into land-lording and then treat it like some pastime or quick hobby. It’s not that big of a deal.

It’s only one tenant. It’s only one thing. In the beginning, that’s what people do.

But I would encourage you to treat it like a business from day one. What does that mean? Be organized. Keep your paperwork in folders. Get a file cabinet. Maybe get a phone number—even if it’s a free Google voice number.

Keep organized. Pretend you have a business of 1,000 units. How would you organize that at the beginning? And then you’ll grow into a more organized business. The more organized you are, the happier everybody is, the more streamlined your business runs.

8y8You’re not getting 3 a.m. phone calls from tenants who are angry at you for some broken thing, because you’re organized. So, your entire operation runs better.

2. Understand your local laws.

Look, every single state is different in regard to the laws governing landlord and tenant. But also, cities have their own laws, as well. You need to be aware of what your local laws are, which means you’re going to have to do some reading.

3. Be firm but fair.

Look, I am a nice guy, and in my disc profile, I’m a high I. I like to be liked. I want people to like me.

So, when a tenant asked me a question: “Hey, can I have a dog? It’s a cute little dog.”

I want to say, “Yeah, go ahead have the dog. Now, in some units, I do allow pets, and other ones, I don’t.”

My response is always to want to be liked and to be a nice guy. But what we’ve discovered is that when you take whatever, your kind of like a parent who just gives their kid whatever it wants.

You want candy? Sure. YouTube nine hours a day? Go ahead.

How do you feel about those parents? Not really great, right?

But the tenants are the same way if you just let them do whatever they want. It actually is worse for them.

So, as a landlord, I’ve discovered that you need to become firm but fair. It means don’t treat your tenants differently.

Be fair to them all the same; treat them with respect but you need to be firm. If you said the rent was due on the first, make the rent due on the first. If they paid it the second, we charge a late fee.

I know that’s not a very nice thing to do, but if you let them go without paying a late fee, oftentimes then they’ll pay late next time or the time after.

I mean, this is not a probably. This is almost always how it works. Ask any landlord who hates their life and has trouble getting rent from their tenant. It’s almost always because they weren’t firm with their tenant.

Contact Miami Property Management, LLC

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