Managing Tenants Without Personal Confrontation!

Written memos saved my bacon!

The number one reason landlords & owners of rental properties give up or sell out early is unruly tenants. Tenants can cause property owners to think more about jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge than building wealth and a worry-free retirement. Dealing with people and setting up the rules for how they must live while occupying your rental properties is a make or break challenge facing every landlord.

Income property buyers don’t automatically become skilled landlords when they purchase properties! They simply become the new owner! Skilled landlording must be learned like any other brand new experience. Although many new investors think of themselves as the boss, which of course they are, still, you’ll be far better off to consider your relationship akin to a salesman and his client. Obviously salesmen, who treat their clients well, fare much better than owners who act like the boss. Tenants already know who the boss is, so there’s really no need to prove it.

Written memos saved my bacon! They gave me back my valuable time and much greater control. When you communicate with memos, you can effectively bypass or eliminate most of the emotional confrontations that frequently flair up during telephone calls and personal visits. Obviously, you must communicate with your tenants as a landlord, however; it’s your choice the way you do it.

Before I discovered memos, I remember staying mad at one obnoxious tenant for a whole week – perhaps longer. You simply cannot manage your business if you allow one tenant to steal that much of your time (your thoughts). Naturally, my tenant didn’t occupy my thoughts every single minute during the whole week. But he kept me emotionally upset. It’s very difficult to think positive thoughts when a disruptive tenant occupies your mind. Writing quick hand-written memos allows me to communicate with my tenant and present my solution for solving the problem.  

I discovered memo writing pretty much out of necessity. The more properties I acquired, the more tenant issues I had.

Tenant calls or visits to the property were taking far too much of my time. Obviously, when these calls or visits resulted in decisions contrary to my tenants’ wishes, arguments and emotional discussions would often follow. It’s these types of one-on-one confrontations I wanted to avoid.  

Many of my short handwritten memos address terms in my rental agreement such as; don’t work on cars, please keep the lawns watered and remove the junk scattered in the front yard. Tenants almost always feel they must defend themselves or offer some outlandish excuse. From my perspective, these types of requests (memos) are not debatable, I simply want compliance. When you study examples of my memos, you’ll see there’s always a hook, meaning, what will happen if my tenants fails to comply. As you might guess, my tenants don’t share my enthusiasm regarding these memos. Tenants would much rather take up my time and argue in person.

I always begin my memos with a sentence like; we need your help! This sets the tone before I launch into what I’m asking my tenant to do, or what I’m responding about. Tenants call for repairs or whatever on my special landlord telephone equipped with an answering machine which allows me to monitor the calls. Tenants don’t like answering machines either, so I get lots of hang-ups. When they’re serious however, they leave a message. This gives me a choice! I can return the call or address the issue with a memo. Once again I’ll repeat what I said earlier. You must communicate with your tenants – it’s your choice the way you do it.

Approximately 90% of all my communication with tenants is done with memos or short letters. When I drive by my property and see something I don’t like such as; lack of maintenance, junk automobiles or too many visitors, I immediately fire out a memo to address the issue. Many tenant phone calls can be handled the same way.

Contrary to what you might think – a great deal of time can be saved using quick hand-written memos to manage tenants. Obviously, stress levels for landlords are greatly reduced when personal contact and telephone calls can be avoided. My home study courses; “MANAGING YOUR TENANTS BY MAIL”, Product 2118 consists of over 300 actual memos and letters for almost every situation. Each memo has a short explanation for its use, plus the course includes 8 studio recorded CD’s to explain my overall strategy.

One of my most successful students, Dan S., claims ...

one of the biggest reasons he was able to grow his real estate empire from 4 rental houses to 85 in roughly three years was because he treated landlording very seriously. He learned everything he could as fast as he could! Learning how to use Jay’s memos played a big part in Dan’s success.

In my best-selling landlord book; “MANAGING TENANTS & TOILETS”, ...

available at Amazon. In Chapter four; “KNOWLEDGE MAKES A DIFFERENCE”, Dan tells the story about how he used Jay’s hand-written memos to avoid both personal contacts and time consuming evictions to rid himself of drug using tenants he inherited with his newly acquired property. Hand-written memos saved Dan thousands of dollars in formal eviction fees, plus helped him solve the problem quickly before his good paying tenants moved out.

Writing a memo gives the landlord time to think about an issue rather than giving the tenant an “on the spot” answer that later, with a little more thought, you’d like to retract. Another major benefit for landlords is having a written record of everything you tell your tenants. Written memos eliminate any confusion about who said what – and when. 

Should you ever end up in a courtroom with your tenant regarding property issues you’ve addressed, but the tenant claims otherwise – a written memo can win the day. The written word will always trump tenant outbursts.