Should I Renew My Pittsburgh Resident’s Lease?
To Renew or Not To Renew Your Resident’s Lease?
Near the end of every residency, you need to ask yourself whether or not you want to renew your resident’s lease.
Today, we’re talking about what you should consider when you’re making this decision.
Is Your Resident Paying Their Rent on Time?
One factor to consider when you’re thinking about renewing a resident’s lease is if they pay their rent on time.
If they pay on time consistently each month and you’ve never had to send a reminder or ask where their payment is, that’s great – it’s a good reason to renew the lease!
However, if your resident doesn’t pay rent on time each month, you’ll need to decide if you’re okay with that.
If they pay a few days late every month but they always pay, you might find it tolerable since you’d get to collect a late fee.
The tardy payments may be inconvenient, but if you like the extra income that late fees provide, renewing with a resident who pays a little bit late may work out well for you.
Is Your Resident Taking Care of the Property?
Another point to look at is how well the resident keeps up with property maintenance and cleaning.
If you’re consistently receiving maintenance requests because things are breaking or are being damaged, you might not want to keep such residents in your property.
It’s a good idea to do an inspection before you decide on a lease renewal – this will give you an opportunity to look at the condition of your property and evaluate the resident’s living conditions.
If you see damage, pests, or indications that the resident may be violating your lease agreement, there’s a good chance that you may not want to renew.
But if everything looks like it did at the beginning of the lease term, a renewal probably makes sense!
Will You Increase Your Rent?
Lease renewal is a good time to increase rent, which is another decision you’ll have to make when you’re renewing your resident’s lease.
How much can you increase without chasing the resident out?
You’ll need to do a market analysis to know what other residents are paying in rent for properties similar to yours.
If they’re not paying significantly more, you might want to leave the rent where it is so you can retain your high quality residents and avoid turnover expenses.
How Does Arbors Management Help?
Here at Arbors, we conduct a physical inspection of a property 120 to 150 days before the lease expires.
Then, we send the report to the owner through our online portal. You’ll have a chance to review the inspection report and our recommendations for how much rent should be increased.
You can review that information and decide if you agree, if you’d like to make a different rental increase, or if you don’t want to do one at all.
You can also tell us if you’d rather not renew the current resident’s lease – we’re here to move forward with what you want to do.
Once we have confirmation on how to proceed, we’ll coordinate with the resident and send them the paperwork to successfully complete the renewal process, if you so choose.
All in All…
Deciding whether or not to renew your current resident’s lease can be challenging, but when it comes down to it, you really just need to consider 3 big questions:
- Does your resident pay their rent on time?
- Is your resident caring for your property?
- Do you plan on increasing your rent?
Once you work through those questions, whether it be on your own or with professional guidance from Arbors, you should be able to reach a sound decision.
If you need help deciding whether or not to renew your resident’s lease, contact us at Arbors Management – we’d be more than happy to help!
