A landlords welcome guide for new tenants

Giving your tenants a welcome pack will set expectations & ground rules early and could save you a lot of time and money during the tenancy period. You can guarantee that not every tenant is going to understand what their responsibilities are straight off the bat. Making this crystal clear from the start will serve to remove any confusion and potential disagreements.

However, it’s important to put this in writing. Why you ask?

Simple. Tenants’ expectations can sometimes be unreasonable, like expecting you to rush around to change a lightbulb. Small things like this can soon escalate and before you know it, they will start withholding rent unless you meet their demands. And worse still, if you ever get into a dispute that goes to court, you’ll need every shred of evidence to make it clear that you’ve done your duty as a landlord.

Also, you want your property looked after. It is, after all, your income.

So, set in writing what you want from your tenant during their stay, or your tenants might expect certain things from you that really, they should be taking care of themselves.

If this is done correctly your tenants will know exactly what they should contact you for, and what they should sort out themselves. Don’t forget the legal stuff.

Here are some pointers to help.

Making sure your tenants have the right documentation like EPC, Gas Safety Certificates and EICRs is a legal requirement. You must also be giving the tenant details on the deposit protection scheme you’ve used.

Covering these essentials will protect you should any problems during the tenancy arise. We’ve covered this extensively in previous blogs regarding Section 8 & Section 21 notices which you can read here.

https://alphaletz.com/section-8-or-21-notice-everything-landlords-must-know-2022/

Have the right systems in place.

All your interactions with your tenants should, for best practice, be documented. Even phone calls and text messages should be noted.

Having the right routines, processes and systems laid out should make your job as a Landlord twenty times easier than without, and trust us, we’ve seen how ugly it can get when disputes go to court and the Landlord hasn’t effectively put anything in place to protect themselves.

Bad tenants exist and even with the right tenant screening in place, you never know if someone’s circumstances are going to change.

Should you ever need to evict a tenant, you’ll need every single bit of evidence you can scrape together to prove you’ve used your due diligence especially to get the courts on your side.

A property management system like Alphaletz (https://alphaletz.com) can help you effectively track rental income, monitor arrears and store the right documentation against particular properties. It’s the most effective form of cover for Landlords who are looking to shield themselves against tenant malpractice.

Provide a Welcome Pack to Each Tenant

Hands down the best way to welcome a tenant is by providing a thorough Welcome Pack.

This helps you as a Landlord provide absolutely everything a tenant might need. Welcome Packs typically cover things like expectations from a Landlord to a tenant, the location of gas & electric meters and the water stopcock all the way through to legal compliance documents that your tenant will need.

It’s an effective checklist that you can pretty much use yourself so you’re not leaving anything out. More importantly, it helps you enhance the tenant move in experience without too much leg work.

If you don’t have your own, don’t worry. We’ve got a tenant welcome pack that we’ve designed. It’s free, comprehensive and covers everything that you and your tenants need to know.

The Landlords Welcome Guide for New Tenants

Richard Jackson

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