Maintaining a good landlord-tenant relationship

Maintaining a good relationship with your landlord or tenant is important to keeping everyone happy, stress free and ensuring both parties get to live comfortably while protecting the property. In this week’s blog, we go over some tips that can help you maintain a good landlord and tenant relationship.

Open and honest communication

The key to most relationships is open and honest communication. This helps keep everyone on the same page and ensures each party feels they have a voice and an avenue to be heard. When people feel they can talk about issues and problems, they’re more likely to be dealt with early before the become major things that are harder to resolve or can snowball into other problems.

Review and follow the lease

Before you sign the lease, make sure you review it with your landlord to make sure you have a common understanding of the details and can hash out any concerns that either party may have. Once the lease is signed, it is a legally binding contract that both parties need to follow. And any time either one of the parties violates a term of the contract, this can lead to conflict or legal action.

Pay rent on time and in full

There’s an old saying about money being the root of all problems, and if that’s true, not paying rent on time is the perfect catalyst for a lot of problems. If as a tenant you ever feel you may not be able to pay your rent on time, let your landlord know as soon as possible since they may be dependent on this money being paid on time in order to avoid problems of their own. Or they can at least try make arrangements to give you more time to pay your rent.

Ask for permission instead of forgiveness

Some landlords have strict rules that they expect you to follow, but occasionally, the tenant may need some exceptions to these rules. A good example is parties or get togethers. We’ve heard stories of people who would like to host some of their friends and family on a special occasion even though your landlords would not typically allow this. If that’s the case, reach out to your landlord and see if they can make an exception. Also let the neighbours know so that they aren’t alarmed by noise or extra cars in the street or in the area. It’s better to ask permission before hand instead of receiving complaints after the fact and try to undo the damage that has already been done.

Maintain a good relationship with your neighbours

More often than not, if you have a disagreement with your neighbours or the building manager, this information may end up going to your landlord, since in some cases disputes need to be handled with the owner of the unit and not the tenant. The less complaints your landlord receives, the happier they will be.

Take care of the property

Even though you’re renting the property temporarily and it doesn’t belong to you, it’s a good idea to take good care of the property. Not taking care of your property could have a negative impact on your neighbours and this could ultimately end up affecting your landlord. Plus taking care of the property almost guarantees that you will get your entire damage deposit back when you decide to move.

Respect personal space

It’s illegal for a landlord to show up to or enter your property without informing you, but as a landlord it may be a good idea not to show up unannounced or unexpectedly. From the perspective of the tenant this may seem intrusive or may seem like you are spying on them. So, if you want to meet your tenant, it’s a good idea to let them know ahead of time.

All these points above are good food for thought, but the key thing to remember is whenever you are renting a new property, your new landlord may ask for a reference from your previous landlord or for a credit report. Violating any of the points above could hurt your chances of getting a good reference or good credit report and decrease the likelihood that you will get into the new property that you’re interested in.

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