subject: Make Tenants Feel at Home: Talk Sometime Over Lunch [print this page] Make Tenants Feel at Home: Talk Sometime Over Lunch
It's not easy to approach tenants considering that their personalities are not all the same, and that they vary as wide as the array of properties that you have. In cases as such, the best way to approach them and tell your tenants about certain business matters such as renewal of lease contract, changes in occupancy, and contract extension, is to do it in person, and by in person, it has to be something casual, subtle and friendly. Let's drop business for a while for it is important for tenants to feel like they are being serviced well and that you actually have good intentions too apart from business interests. This will establish a deeper bond between the two parties, for most landlords don't even show, or rarely show themselves to their tenants.
However, you can't just call your tenant at some place random and tell them about the changes that will soon occur in your property. If ever you do some radical changes about business, the best way to gauge the good and bad possibilities is if you actually see how they react. That way, you will know how to counter it before they get a bad feeling about it. If you ever want to talk to them about business matters in a friendly way, make it homey and surreptitiously professional by inviting them over to lunch.
As to the conversation, you can't just jump into telling them about the real business dealing. Though it is your end goal to talk about it, no need to get into it right through for it will defeat the purpose of lunch and being casual and being friendly and what not. Start the chat with general questions pertaining to family, health and work life instead. If you have this in place already, you can subtly bring your actual purpose up by asking them how they're being serviced, their comments, concerns, complains etc.
If you do this, tenants will surely feel welcome and at home. It might even compel to them to ink a new contract in order to stay in the company for a year or two more. It's amazing how simple acts of kindness such as a lunch invitation can strengthen the relationship between you and your tenants, and how it can make them renew their lease for another year or so. It's good for you, for them and for business.
