Caitlyn, Kath, and Erica share how to raise rents without losing tenants. They recommend 3 to 5 percent increases, sending renewal notices 60 days early instead of the legal minimum 30, and explaining the increase clearly by phone and email. Residents who understand the reasoning and get time to decide are less likely to leave.
Questions this video answers
Episode 95.
About 3–5%.
Standard legal notice: 30 days; they send a 60-day renewal offer to give residents more time.
Hi guys.
Welcome back to another episode on our Freedom blog. This is episode number 95. I'm Caitlyn and today I'm here with Kath. She's our leasing, one of our leasing agents for Independence Property Management and Erica, she is our assistant property manager. Right, okay. And today we're going to be talking about how to renew leases and keep residents happy. As always, we are going to do a podcast on this as well. We're going to talk on a lot more, tell some, you know, past story examples and things like that and you know, how to increase rinse. So the first thing that I kind of wanted to touch on as a general kind of rule of thumb, if you are trying to increase your rents and aren't really sure where to go, generally speaking, it's usually around a 3 to 5% increase, kind of whatever you are comfortable with on increasing. Cat or Erica, do either of you guys have anything you want to add to that?
I also like. Oh, sorry Cat.
No, no, no. Go ahead, Erica.
To look at the surrounding like properties, kind of what other people are searching for. So a lot of the times you can just kind of type in your address and or the general area and find other properties around that area too.
Yeah, absolutely.
Prices. So then you can kind of match the market as well.
Mm.
Kath.
Yeah, yeah. Well also for renewing leases, we normally first take into account what is the market rent for the area and then like what Caitlin and Erica mentioned that it's generally just 3 to 5% increase for renewals or else too much increase will give you a vacant property unit.
Definitely it'll cause for more than likely probably an unhappy resident. So now how do you go about notifying your resident that you're going to be increasing their rent?
So we notify them. Normally it's just around 30 days, but we send out 60 days renewal offer to give them more time to think about the offer that we're sending them. So notify them by email and then I'll get in touch with them through phone as well.
Fantastic. So you're doing several different ways of communication with them on that. Like hey, this is happening. We want to give you plenty of time to make a decision on what you want to do. You know, standard by law it's 30 days. We're giving you an additional 30 days to kind of decide what you want to do. So that's great. One way to keep your resident happy for sure is communicating clearly on what is happening and adding a buffer in like we're currently doing with them. You know, making sure we aren't just throwing it on them and giving them as little time to kind of plan and figure out what they are wanting to do in the next step. So it's great. I think that's all we're going to touch on today for the vlog. But in the podcast, like I mentioned a little earlier, we're going to go into some examples and stories, other ways to keep your residents happy and what you can even maybe, you know, do to kind of incentivize your residents or way like things to say if they ask, well, why is my rent increasing? So be sure to check that out. That will be coming out in the near future. That is on Real Talk, which is available on all major streaming platforms. So be sure to check it out and subscribe. That's all that we have today. We always like to end these with Invest Smart, Live Happy.
Bye.
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