Real Estate Investor Articles

If you take the time to do an in person walk through with your new tenants when they move into one of your houses, you can get some additional mileage out of this time by giving your tenants some basic instructions on taking care of the property. Included in your lease should be a list of tenant responsibilities. In our leases, this always includes the task of changing the furnace/air filter monthly. However, many tenants have a hard time doing this which ends up costing us in service, cleaning and repairs.

While you cannot be there every month with your tenant to ensure compliance with this provision in their lease, you can

Follow up:

make it as easy as possible for them to follow through with this preventative maintenance. When you accompany your tenants on their initial walk through of the property, amongst the other things that you will do, plan on showing your tenant where the furnace is and how to change the filter. Additionally, provide them with 6-12 months worth of filters. Filters are cheap in comparison to the cost of repairs and replacement. I strongly recommend making this small investment in materials and and time to educate your tenant.

There are many other things that you should show your tenants during the initial walk through, like where the central water shut off is, but furnace filter maintenance is probably the most important. Taking the time to educate your tenants before they move in can make a big difference down the road. There will be less calls to you because their heating/air conditioning has stopped working, or is running all the time, and your pocket book will suffer less. Based on my own experience and that of other landlords I know, this is probably the most frequent maintenance issue that tenants call on, and much of it is preventable. So, my advice: educate your tenants from the beginning in an attempt to preempt maintenance trouble in the future.

Until my next post,

James