5. Surprises—bad ones
As a landlord there are no good surprises in rental property or real estate. That is not true for your tenants, though. Bad surprises happen when something unexpected affects a tenant's living arrangements and make things inconvenient for him or her. When the landlord has something to do with that, good tenants get irritated with the landlord. There's nothing you can do about a tenant's relatives showing up at his or her door unexpectedly and wanting to stay for a couple of weeks. Your tenants won't blame you for that–usually.
What makes good tenants impatient with their landlords is unexpected inconveniences and problems that the landlords could have headed off by an early warning system for events which are going to occur in and around the tenants' homes. We have already looked at repairs that both inconvenience and surprise tenants. We have also talked about complaints about the unneighborly behavior of other tenants.
Many large apartment complexes have newsletters that tell tenants what is going on and what to expect. Smaller landlords can't do that very well, since widely separated single-family residences and small plexes don't have the same kind of community. But you can send notices to tenants telling them exactly what's going to happen and when that will affect their homes and living conditions.
You can also keep up with events and problems going on in the neighborhood around the property that are likely to create a disturbance, inconvenience, or simply be an item of interest. It could be a new shopping area, or it could be road construction that will make it more difficult to get home to their parking space that is open and available. Good tenants appreciate your attention. Your attention also enables you to keep track of things that will affect the value of your property.
Good tenants hate bad surprises. Let them have time to work around inconveniences.