Managing Difficult Tenants (Successfully)! Insights from the Best Property Management Company Detroit Offers

Despite rigorous tenant screening, real estate investors can't completely avoid bad tenants. While screening helps reduce the potential of terrible residents, sometimes they happen anyway. Whether a good resident goes bad—or you skipped the screening process, and you're stuck with a bad renter now—they don't go away on their own! 

Property owners must know how to handle troublesome residents to produce successful rentals. Be prepared and resolve tenant disputes with these tips from the best property management company Detroit offers!

Recognize Signs of Trouble

How can property owners recognize difficult residents? Tenants who initially seemed ideal can later become problematic. They might bring in unauthorized tenants who move in without permission, start paying the rent later and later every month—or stop paying at all! Others might damage your property and refuse to pay for it. 

When you notice lease violations and late rent payments, you probably have a difficult renter to deal with in Detroit!

Stay Calm and Listen

When problems arise with a tenant, it's critical to stay calm. No matter how terrible they are, try to avoid a confrontation. Pursue an amicable solution—especially with tenants who have not been a problem before. 

Listen to your resident and try to understand the situation from all angles. It's critical for tenants to pay the rent on time and follow the rules. However, financial strain can make it challenging for a renter to pay on time. In other situations, stubborn tenants who refuse to pay the rent still need you to be calm and patient when working through the situation. 

Excellent Documentation Helps 

Keeping excellent records of phone calls, emails, reminders, and written notice helps support the lease enforcement process. Starting with good documentation includes a thorough lease and a ticketing system to receive maintenance requests and mark them complete. 

As you run into problems with renters and properties, taking photos of tenant damage can come in handy when it's time to send your resident the bill to recover the costs of repairs—or if they try to dispute the damage.  

Maintaining a thorough documentation process also helps make your case if a difficult tenant situation leads to legal action. With your lease, records of communications, photos, and invoices, your legal team and the best property management company Detroit offers can help you resolve a situation using the court system, and a tenant continues a refusal to comply with the rules. 

Follow the law if a bad renter situation leads to the final option of eviction. This may be necessary if the tenant's behavior continues to disturb neighbors or property damage isn't resolved. Eviction may also be necessary if a tenant continues not to pay the rent.  

Avoiding Difficult Tenants Is Best

The best way to manage difficult tenants is to avoid them! We mentioned it's not always possible to never deal with another bad resident again. However, Detroit property owners can take several steps to reduce the occurrences of bad tenants (and improve your income)! Difficult tenants are time-consuming and expensive problems. Apply the following tips to enjoy better tenants (and deal with fewer bad residents). 

Say "No" To Friends and Family

It might seem like you're doing your cousin or buddy a favor by letting them rent your Detroit property. However, choosing tenants who are friends or family can lead to difficult renter situations. 

Your buddy might try to take advantage of your friendship by delaying a rental payment once or twice (or more). Your cousin might run into the garage, then try to fix it on his own without telling you. These are costly problems that might be hard to manage when navigating personal relationships versus the landlord-tenant relationship. 

If you choose friends or family as tenants, enforce the lease as you would with any other tenants. 

Recognize Professional Tenants

Professional tenants create problems for a living! They never intend to be good residents. These renters go from rental home to rental home, posing as excellent potential tenants during the interview process. However, once they move in, they never pay the rent, break things in your rental, then refuse to move out despite every effort to get them to comply with the rules—or leave. 

Put a thorough screening process in place and work with the best property management company Detroit offers to watch for red flags and keep these tenants out of your rentals. 

Hire Detroit Property Management to Handle Difficult Tenants

Leaving tenant and rental property issues to the best professional property management company Detroit means never having to deal with bad tenants again! The right property managers already have a thorough screening process in place. They also know how to recognize potentially bad tenants before they have a chance to become your new renters. They also know how to recognize potentially bad tenants before they have a chance to become your new renters. With a property manager in place, rental property owners never have to interact with residents!

If you're tired of dealing with difficult tenants, Own It Detroit can help! Let's talk about our expert tenant management services.

What should you look for in a property manager? Download our free guide to find out!