Balancing the Landlord and Tenant Relationships
In commercial and retail property, there are ongoing pressures of lease occupancy and rental collections. Landlords and tenants can sometimes be in conflict with each other for unique reasons.
It is also notable that some landlords can create poor tenant relations within a property due to inadequate communications, conflicting negotiations, overlooked maintenance, and tougher lease negotiations. So, what can a property manager or leasing manager do to solve things?
If there are a lot of tenants in a property, the whole situation of occupancy can be pressured and a major hurdle in ongoing asset performance.
If you are managing an investment asset, and the landlord/tenant relationships have been festering in this way, then there are some things to address. Putting a tenant retention plan in place can be helpful.
Tenant Retention Planning
Ultimately you don’t want a vacancy or many vacancies in an investment property. If you are the property manager or leasing manager, then those tenant relationships can ‘make or break’ your ability to optimise the asset investment outcomes.
So what does a tenant retention plan look like? Try some of these strategies to start with:
- Tracking the upcoming vacancies that are coming up over the next 12 to 18 months to see if you can renegotiate lease terms or occupancy areas
- Helping tenants change or reduce premises leased to minimize the risk of vacating
- Delaying rent reviews if the business economic circumstances locally are showing pressure
- Meeting with all tenants monthly to ensure any occupancy concerns are relayed through to the right people and addressed
- Watching the critical date events in every lease to ensure that the key lease matters are addressed in a timely way
These things can be tracked and optimized. That is the job of the property manager and or leasing manager. You can set up a tenant retention plan for any managed property and merge it into your leasing business plan for the property.