4 Tips For Managing College Tenant Troublemakers

By Francine Fluetsch on January 30, 2016

Renting out properties means you are always going to get a mix of college students who want to rent, some of whom could be troublemakers. You already have enough on your plate as it is, and the last thing you want is to have to worry about some crazy tenants.

image via memegenerator.net

Here are some tips for how to deal with the troublemakers that you may come across when renting out your place.

Screen your tenants.

The best way to deal with trouble is to attempt to avoid it altogether. This of course isn’t an easy thing to do, but a way for you to feel more secure about who you are renting to is to screen your tenants.

Look up their credit history to see if they will pay on time, run a background check on them, and actually follow up with their references that they listed for you. If they list that they are employed, call the employer and ask about them.

If you really want to dig deep, you can also Google them and look them up on social media. Not saying that this will catch all the troublemakers, but the ones who aren’t smart about what they do will have it all up on social media for the world to see.

Your Google search might also turn up if they have ever made the Dean’s List, if they have earned any awards, or if they have done something sketchy. Some digging will be able to give you a good enough idea of who the person is before you offer them a contract, which will hopefully eliminate any troublemakers.

Lay out your rules.

When you meet with your tenants to go over the lease, make sure to lay out your rules, both in writing and in conversation, and make sure that they understand what is expected of them, and if they have any questions about it, they should go over it with you. When making rules, don’t be unreasonable, but lay out what matters to you and explain why you need them to follow the rules if they want to rent your place.

If tenants have a clear view of what is expected of them and what will happen if they break your rules, the experience should be much better for the both of you. You can’t expect them to follow rules that they don’t know about, right? You might even want to post the rules somewhere in the place, so they can’t use the “oh, I didn’t know that,” excuse.

smithins.com

Follow through with repercussions.

The only way that your rules will stay followed is if you actually pull through with reprimanding the student tenants if they break the rules. You need to really show them that you are serious about what you told them, and if they can’t follow something, they need to know what will happen, and you will need to put that consequence into action as soon as possible. If you wait forever to follow up with them, they might be more inclined to break more rules since they see that you aren’t really on top of enforcing them.

Maybe you can have a system where if they break a rule the first time, they will get a warning, the second time they’ll have to pay a fine, and the third time they’d get kicked out. You can tweak this depending on the rules that you wish to be followed, but make sure that they know what will happen, and that you actually enforce it if you need to.

Make them like you, but respect you.

You are less likely to have problems with your tenants if you get along well. That being said, you don’t have to get all buddy buddy, but if you show them that you are there for them and will hold up your end of fixing things when needed, caring about their safety, and being nice to them during meetings, chances are they are going to try a lot harder to stay on your good side since many students have dealt with crazy landlords at one point.

If they can see that you are a nice person, they will be more inclined to follow your rules. Some college kids really have it out for the people they don’t like, so if you decide you aren’t going to respond to their complaints about a leaking toilet, they might be throwing a party, that you don’t approve of, in the place .

While you still want to stick to your rules, also realize that these college students are going through a lot, so it might be beneficial to get their side of the story if they can’t get the money together for rent or the neighbors are complaining that there is a lot of shouting coming from the house.

Talking things through will make the relationship between the two parties less hostile, and if you do have to implement a strike for something they did, talking it out will help them understand what is happening, and what they can do to prevent it from happening again.

These are just a few ways to deal with any trouble making tenants that you may come across.

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