How to Encourage Your Tenants to Pay Rent on Time
After a tenant has signed the Atlanta retail space lease, many property managers assume that the rent will now come in every month without any hustle. The reality is that life has got many challenges and a situation that looked manageable at first may turn out to be very unbearable. Besides, most tenants have other responsibilities other than rent which in any perspective would appear to be more pressing. When buying or building a commercial property, the last thing you think about as an investor is that this property will not yield you any return because the reverse seems obvious. Encouraging your tenants to pay rent therefore, may not be part of your routine but it should be something to consider seriously.
Keep the Building Habitable
At the close of most Atlanta commercial real estate sale agreements, some multi-tenant warehouses owners now sit back and wait for the rent to start trickling in. It may work for a while but what happens when tenants feel that the amenities and utilities in that building are not serving them properly. The scenario would be a building that is occupied briefly and then vacated for better options. Tenants need to feel that their goods are and hence have no reason to move out. Checking the social amenities at a mall complex regularly, painting the interiors plus the exteriors and fixing leakages in time are the best practices for making a building habitable for long periods of time.
Provide Payment Options
If paying rent through a check off system at the bank is easy for tenant A, it might not be convenient for tenant B. Different people have different channels for accessing their money and giving them an option of rent payment that suits them makes payment easy. If the process of paying rent through a stipulated channel seems hard, tenants may delay rent payment as they try to adjust their lives to fit into that system. Give them 2 or 3 options in which to channel their rent money and see how punctual they will be.
Give Incentives
Giving an incentive to a tenant may seem counterproductive since it is you as the property owner who needs this income. An incentive does not have to be in form of money because there are many services that tenants pay for. Property services Atlanta area have been known to offer service vouchers for garbage collection or free choice color painting during routine maintenance. You have lived with your tenants for a while now, so you should know what they will appreciate more as individuals or businesses.
